Always Right There
by opti-mnff
Summary: Lydia is somehow struggling more than Stiles, now dealing with the post-surrogate sacrifice darkness.
1. Late Night Conversations

**A/N: **Howdy! This is the first time I've written within the TW-verse, after a binge watch of all 2.5 seasons and my growing love for the badass that is Stiles and Stydia. It's also the first thing I've written in a _long _time fanfiction wise, so - please - fill my ears (or eyes, rather) with critique!

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_Flesh being ripped from bone. Every inch of nerve tissue being peeled off her body, flaying anything – everything – from her existence. Blank, neutral faces staring and watching from the bleachers as a massive figure clawed and tore. It was a public execution with an apathetic audience, no one minding or even noticing her screams for help. They all seemed so relaxed, taking in the grisly spectacle. It was worse than the pain, the thought that she was alone out here. _

Lydia jerked up from the horrid dream, pulling away from the dimly lit desk. The thought of the pain sent shivers across her arms and she scanned the room in embarrassment. No one, of course, was in her room. It was just a bad dream, obviously. Turning back to the work in front of her, the tedious research that always came with any history project, Lydia sighed and set back to scanning the section on Robespierre. The inset painting of the infamous prosecutor caught her eye for a moment, until the blank expression and high forehead roared and bore sharp fangs. Red eyes stared into hers until she fell back, wanting to get as far away from them as possible.

The paper would have to wait. Getting a solid night's sleep would resolve all of these problems – hallucinations, feelings of stress, and definitely the whole drooling on her book thing. Except Lydia Martin never drooled, that she could be sure of. She must have spilled a cup of coffee on there, something about coffee was important she remembered before sliding into bed, ignoring some internal reminder. She just wanted to get some sleep, get away from that book. As the weight of her eyelids became too much, Lydia hoped it would be a long, dreamless night…

_The claws dug deeper, finding her throat. Slashing, cutting, pulling. The figure seemed to find every bit of meat hanging onto her bones, until there wasn't anything left on the field. Until there was only the howling wolf and Lydia's silent audience._

"Hey, oh… uh," the sound of a shaky, nasally voice and crinkling paper interrupted her sleep, "Well I'll let you get back to that sleeping thing. Don't mind me. Don't mind Stiles, yeah. Do that. Or don't, I mean."

It couldn't have been too long because the moon still hung in the sky, concealed by a fade of clouds, when Stiles had woke her up. Lydia sighed, remembering that she was supposed to be actually working with this spastic mess on the project she agreed to ignore. She had even asked him to go out and grab more coffee, since the most recent adventure in Alpha/neglecting parent relations hadn't gone so well with Scott walking out. For a few days. Of course, this meant Stiles _had _to find him. Which meant, naturally, Lydia would go too. So, shrugging the dream off once again, Lydia corralled him back in with a gesture and a yawn.

"No, it's fine. We should probably get this over with anyways-"

"That's the spirit!" And with a grunt, Stiles swiveled her desk chair around and plopped the bag down on her bed unceremoniously, digging out a bagel and taking the larger cup for himself. Lydia chuckled and pointed at the big wheat donut, saying,

"So, I assume we're splitting that?"

"Split what, oh this? No, sorry, we're exclusive." Stiles gave her that big grin, slightly lopsided and all, he always tried on her when the joke was weak or he was just seeing how far he could go before she would give in and laugh. Then he shoved the bagel in his mouth, biting a huge chunk out, and Lydia swore she could feel meat being torn from her arms. She certainly must have made a face or glared at it, because Stiles soon dropped the grin and cocked his head in that 'did I do something wrong' way.

"If fwomth-" a moment to take the bagel out, another to swallow, "Is something wrong? I mean, hey, if you really want it you can have it. It just, y'know, called out to me when I got the coffee."

"Called out to you?"

"Yeah. You know, it gave me a wink and I mean, hey, you see something that looks this good," Stiles flaunted the apparently magnificent sample of baked goods in front of her, "and you gotta give in."

Another, slower, bite for emphasis and this time she didn't think about the dream. Instead she giggled a bit when Stiles grinned. Her laughter made him break out in a big smile which should have been disgusting, what with the whole food-still-in-mouth situation, but Lydia only laughed harder. Soon Stiles was laughing too and the whole dream seemed to wash away, replaced by a peaceful feeling. She felt warm and comfortable.

Lydia recalled that it always seemed to work that way: she'd miss a day in class and end up with Stiles as her partner for a lab or project, something or other, and it'd be a pain in the ass just getting up the next day. She would have to deal with _him_, the pining klutz. Then, after she put it off for so long that a late-night session was required, they'd meet somewhere – almost always her house, which should have been awkward but it just wasn't – and go through one hell of a crunch. And, somehow, she was all smiles when he drove off or dropped her off. A whisper of a joke was still on her mind, some sarcastic snap that she realized was too hurtful and she'd text an apology for, or even if they'd just talk.

It just felt normal, not feeling stressed out around Stiles. He was never 'fake' around her, and he always at least tried to lighten things up. Even if he stumbled over twenty punchlines, the one time he got it the warmth would stick with her for hours. Days, even. Lydia sighed, watching him mull over a passage and write down a note, offer her the bagel for the fifteenth time before finishing it off.

"Thanks so much, Stiles. Really, thanks."

"Uh, you're welcome. I'm glad someone finally said it! I mean, I had to drive a full ten minutes to get this," a sip of coffee and an over exaggerated exclamation, "But seriously, for what?"

"Just thanks. I'm glad you came over." Lydia didn't want to say it. It always felt wrong telling someone about her problems, like she had given up or hadn't even tried solving them herself. But with Stiles it was different, again. Some part of her, some feminist standard, told her she didn't need to rely on a man to get her through something and she would just soldier on, head held high.

Then things like the nightmare would happen. Then she would try and hide away in her own mind and, every single time, Stiles seemed to show up. When a near-breakdown, sudden shortness of breath and everything, happened there he was. There was the golden boy carrying a tray filled with way too much food, who'd sit next to her. He'd say a light joke, and scoot her over, putting a basket of fries in front of her and always saying the same thing. Sometimes with a smirk, other times he'd be close to tears himself. There was even the time he grabbed her wrists and nearly screamed it at her, and she had to explain why she had bruises there to her mother later. That sentence he seemed to want to drill into her skull, that same:

"You know I'm always right here."

Stiles grabbed her hand, gave it a brief squeeze, and only stopped when she nodded and bit her lip, trying not to leap forward and crush the dork sitting across from her with the biggest hug she could muster. Lydia had no idea why she shouldn't. It didn't matter if she had hit him, had yelled at him, had called him the worst things imaginable. Every single time, no matter what, he'd return with open arms. She just didn't get why he did it. No normal kid with some little, schoolboy crush does that.

"Why do you always say that?"

It cut through the silence that followed, after they went back to idle talk and discussion over how exactly to finish the final portions of the essay. Stiles dropped his head and sighed, then looked back up at her. He always did that when he had something important to say – he looked into your eyes with determination, sometimes real and most times for show. This time he looked directly at her, locking gaze before he answered. It was simple, and any of the usual sarcasm was gone. In its place was that real determination that Lydia seemed to always hear herself but had never heard anyone else say about Stiles; that tone that showed a real force of will behind the words, a real promise that was meant to be kept.

"Because I mean it, Lydia. I'm here. I'll always be here."


	2. Diving Headlong

**A/N: **I swear I didn't intend this to go on as a multi-chapter thing, but it was too easy to play around with. I'm not 100% about this chapter, but I think there's a redeeming bit near the end. Please, throw some reviews down even if you _loathe _me. Just give me some criticism, or laksdjffklhja about it if you want! Any comment is motivation for me :)

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Stiles knew something was wrong with her. Even when he tried to make it abundantly clear that he wasn't going anywhere and that he'd be around to listen, Lydia was becoming more and more distant. There were days he swore she hadn't even bothered with makeup, at least judging by the rings around her eyes. He called her, texted her, tried to talk to her in class and every which way he could think of outside of school, but ever since that late-night project they had grown apart. He didn't get it. He told her to just talk to him, and now she recedes into herself more than ever. Only one short week and he was beginning to feel like they had never had the heart-to-hearts that popped up ever since the surrogate sacrifices.

The truth was Stiles hated seeing Lydia so unhappy more than anything. She could have been dating Jackson again, being as openly dating as possible, and he'd have been fine if she didn't seem so empty. It felt like he was losing her before he even had a chance. One afternoon, after practice, he just couldn't hold it in anymore. Slamming his gear into the locker, he turned to Scott as usual.

"Man, I just don't get it. I told her she can talk to me, and now she's just locked up. The hell am I supposed to do with that?"

"You _sure_ you're all right? You almost clobbered Danny out there-" Who happened to pass by and give Stiles a glare, "And now you're talking like me."

Stiles stopped to process that for a second, before chuckling. He knew. Of course Scott knew about his thing for Lydia, but this knowing was the difference between a hopeless crush and something else. It only made sense for his best friend to get it before he even got it, as clueless as said best friend usually was.

"Yeah well, it sucks, ok? You're freaking Buddha over there, keeping calm after actually having sex for months, and I'm complaining about not being able to talk."

"It's not easy, dude. Just go talk to her or something, and don't say you 'tried.' Do it." Scott added pointedly before walking out of the locker room, leaving Stiles to mimic him and roll his eyes. Stiles still made a mental note to follow Scott's advice to the T, however. He would worry later about exactly how he could get her to talk without going out of his mind if she ignored him. Even if his best friend was usually clueless, sometimes all he needed was a little push to get him going. And, for Lydia, it didn't take much.

After fruitlessly trying to get her attention the following day in lunch – the usual scooting method, any joke at all, hell even the French fry to the face trick didn't work – Stiles eventually decided to sit across from her and give her the stare treatment. He had to do it once before, to the same whiny Scott who he was talking like more and more apparently, and it wasn't particularly successful then but he would try anything at this point. Her usual bright smile at his entrance was plain ignorance, her full red lips were dulled and dry, and the rings around her eyes were darker than before. Everything about her spoke decay, a withering flower, and he just wanted to give that flower a little rejuvenation, a little care and attention it sorely deserved.

Even so, he tried not to say anything. She played with her food lackadaisically without looking back up at him, but didn't seem to actually eat. Just constant swirls and spirals with a fry in ketchup, which should have alerted him to begin with: the only time he caught Lydia eating fries was when he shoved them in her face. All sorts of crude etchings were sprawled across the tray, everything from some mathematical symbols he recognized to strange signs that didn't mean anything to him. Finally, after about ten minutes of staring and following the markings, Lydia stood and made to leave.

"Hey, where you headed?"

"Class."

That was it. A tiny word, a little bit of something, but it was something. It was the sign of getting somewhere, but Stiles didn't know how he got there or what made her finally talk. So he tried to test his boundaries, as usual.

"Thanks. I meant why aren't you talking to me? It's kind of annoying, you know." It hadn't meant to come out like that, but he couldn't take it back. Before she answered, with a sullen expression and tired voice, Stiles regretted being such a snarky asshole.

"Sorry, I'll try not to bother you."

Putting his head on the tray in disgust, Stiles groaned and heard her slowly walk away from him. Maybe he just couldn't do it. This might be it for anything that ever might have happened between them, he thought. Then that same annoyance bubbled up inside, scratched at his stomach and bellowed to be released. Pushing it down, Stiles finished his food before stomping back to physics to succeed in thoroughly not giving a shit about momentum.

Afterwards, he got into the beat up old Jeep and tried to get Lydia off his mind. Anything would do. Video games, but he'd gotten bored of that topic after a few minutes' drive. Next was his schoolwork which led immediately back to thinking about if she was all right and if he shouldn't just go and talk to her at home. He even tried thinking about sex, but then he thought about what sex with Lydia would be like and slapped himself out of that mess. There was a time and place, he thought.

He resolved to push through the drive home, anger pounding inside of him with an ever-increasing ferocity, and have a talk with his dad. He knew some things, especially noticing Stiles always going to "some girl's house," but he needed some guidance.

By the time the driveway appeared, the anger had frothed and bubbled over ten times over. At one point he was angry with Lydia for being stubborn and refusing his help, and then disgust at himself for even being remotely mad at her. It was a vicious cycle, one that repeated over a few times before he actually made it inside. The ruffling of paper and sighs of disappointment filled the house with the familiar sound of excessive paperwork.

Stiles didn't take any time, however, drawing attention. Setting his bag on the kitchen table, shoving papers left and right and some straight off the surface, he tried to calmly rest his hands on the table. Instead, shaky fingers gripped the edges. The sheriff looked up, at first annoyed and then a worrying crease in his brow formed when he caught sight of Stiles.

"You really worked yourself up over something. Come on, what is it?"

And just like that, barely a tap on the wrist, Stiles exploded.

"You wanna know? You wanna know what's bothering me, dad? Have you ever had to sit and watch someone just kind of… fade away? Like one day they're everything bright and sunshine and whatever, but then the next it's like someone popped their balloon at a parade?" He didn't think over the question about watching someone fade, and before he knew it his father removed his glasses and sighed heavily. Stiles himself felt his jaw tremble and the threat of tears that always followed it.

"Son, I'm not going to answer that question. We both know where it goes, and I just… just don't feel like having that out again."

"All right, but what am I supposed to do about it? I can't – I won't sit by. Not if I can help it, and I-I think I can do s-something." His trembling jaw had stopped a few syllables, and he could tell he wasn't alone. The wringing of hands across the table and clenching and re-clenching of his jaw let Stiles know this wasn't an easy conversation for either of them. It wasn't awkward anymore for them to have talks like this – it just hurt everyone involved, and they both knew it. Stiles smashed his fist on the table, leaning backwards and letting a deep breath out. Every second in this talk was making him angrier and angrier, making the subject so much more painful. What if he lost Lydia like he lost his mother? After a few moments the tired looking man across from him broke out in a soft voice, clearly attempting to restrain his volume.

"Stiles, don't let this go. You'll get through to her eventually." Tears were visible now, and his dad didn't try to hold back his shaky voice anymore as he rang out across the linoleum, "As a m-matter of fact, get the hell off your ass and get over there."

Stiles sat still for a fraction of a second.

"Now!"

And he was off.

The tears from the previous conversation were still on his face during the drive over, but the seething anger inside turned to disappointment: disappointment and regret that he hadn't acted sooner. What made him stand by and let Lydia go so far into herself? He was letting her take that darkness that he was supposed to be feeling and bottling it up. He still couldn't place what was making her feel the need to ignore him, to ignore everyone, but Stiles Stilinski was going to find out. Tonight. Now.

The screeching of bad tires should have alerted the whole suburb, but the definite footsteps and rigorous pounding on the front door led Ms. Martin to open up to a fuming and teary-eyed young man. She seemed to consider Stiles for a moment before nodding and beckoning him inside. If he hadn't been stomping around the house, he would have sworn that the older woman gave him a brief hug before motioning to the stairs. His goal was very clear. There was no backing down now – he had to get Lydia back, no matter the cost.

No knock on the door, no call-out to her, Stiles just charged into Lydia's room. The pale girl at the desk barely acknowledged him before going back to staring at a book lying open in front of her. If he hadn't been emboldened by his father's own anger for his inaction, this sight would have led to the same final decision. Before when she would have at least played angry at him, Lydia did nothing and sighed. Instead of letting go and waiting for him to say some snide remark, a shitty joke, or really anything, Lydia sat there. The rings around her eyes were worsening and every sound seemed to startle her from the neutral complacency of the book, even Stiles approaching her.

One advantage of the apparent lack of sleep was that Stiles could easily pull her from the seat. Grabbing her by both shoulders, he yanked her from the chair before spinning her around to look him in the eyes. This action seemed to startle her senses into reality as she shook her head and blinked at Stiles. In a bland tone, stifled by a yawn, she spoke to him finally.

"What are you doing here? I was trying to get to sleep, get out."

"Lydia, I need you to stop talking for one second. A minute. Literally until I'm done talking to you, okay?" Stiles stared into her eyes, hoping to see recognition in them. She nodded slowly, with only a furrowing brow to tell him that anything was being processed, "I don't know what's going on, but you seriously need to talk to me. It's starting to really freak me out, you not being… well, you anymore."

She bit her lip, clearly in thought.

"No. I don't want to talk about it."

Stiles had to remind himself not to tighten his grip at those words. He knew they were bound to come out, to try and defeat his confidence. To tell him that his bravado was all for nothing and Lydia would further spiral into herself or, maybe, she'd get better and he shouldn't worry. That just wasn't what a Stilinski did, though. This, Stiles could fight. He could grapple with whatever was getting to her, and he would fight to the end just for another talk.

So, resorting to his Plan B, Stiles pulled Lydia closer to him with no resistance. He pushed a wild strand of hair out of her face, trying to steady his hand as he did so and force back the still-flowing tears. His crying and sudden closeness didn't seem to draw much of Lydia's attention. In fact she seemed to be lulled into a trance, staring into his eyes and her mouth opening the slightest bit. Before long she bit back down on her bottom lip but didn't break the gaze.

Stiles must have sat there for minutes that felt like days, hours that felt like years, just brushing bits of hair out of her face before resting his hand on the side of her face.

"If you won't talk to me, fine."

He finally dove headlong into the no-going-back stretch of his backup plan, forgetting whatever awkwardness and channeling his anger and fear, every tear and worry into that one kiss. Stiles felt like he was struggling for every moment of this to continue, like he was drowning in the feeling of kissing Lydia Martin and he just didn't want to resurface. He didn't care that she had dry lips, messy hair, baggy clothes on, and was looking like she needed her next heroin fix – he just wanted that same girl back that he crushed on and, later, kind of fell in love with. After what was certainly not long enough, he broke off from her and poked her chest with a steady rhythm following his sentence:

"But don't think, don't think for a single moment that I'm just gonna give up." Stiles was sobbing by this point and he didn't care, "Don't think I can just lay down and l-let you die."

Lydia was still looking up at him, astonished. They still hadn't talked about the kiss before the sacrifices, never even brought it up once, and here was this guy kissing her more aggressively than any horny little high school boy ever could. Stiles was panting at this point, trying to keep himself focused on Lydia's eyes and not veering off to wipe the tears away – this was something he wanted to show her, he needed to show her he really actually cared. After a few more seconds of heavy breathing, there was a small voice, barely more than a whisper, coming from the tired-looking girl in front of him.

"W-we can talk. We'll talk. Now."


	3. Opening Up

**A/N: **Thanks for the follows and the favorites, the reviews, the reads... and uhh, hopefully ya'll are still with me. Anyways, here's another one of them chapter things for you to enjoy!(?) Let me know what you think of it - drop a review, because it's really, really cool of you to do :)

I hate to say it, but school is getting pretty hectic right now and I'm trying to get my schedule set up correctly for studying and working. This is probably the end of the current creative burst until I get plenty of free-time to hash out another chapter's outline and finished draft. I'm not gonna count out a possible spark that gets me to write another chapter, but I'm not promising anything. I get into trouble when I do that! Anyways, enough of that noise - read the thing, dammit.

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That feeling of being inches away from Stiles, having that support from him was enough to strike through the fog in Lydia's mind. The asphyxiating grip that she had been feeling ever since that night Stiles was there last, the last time he promised to always be there, loosened the smallest bit, enough for her to catch her breath when Stiles kissed her. If she would have thought about it as an isolated event – just a kiss – it wasn't noteworthy or even really anything new, but Stiles – that was different. Everything about it was different. The crying boy in front of her didn't put anything into that kiss he wasn't willing to openly show her, after all Stiles always wore his heart on his sleeve. So there was no second thought to agreeing to talk, no nagging doubt or constricting fear.

It wasn't easy to talk about every that had been happening to her over the past few weeks, however. The nightmares about Peter ripping her apart in front of the faceless audience began overlapping with dreams filled with everyone she loved, everyone close to her, speaking vividly of her failures. Telling her exactly what she was worth to them – she was nothing but the pretty face and angry exterior, and that this was what she deserved. This is the wall Lydia Martin built herself, stone by stone – she had already laid the foundation, and by the time she actually noticed Scott, Allison, and even Stiles, the wall was so imposing that hiding above them all was easy enough. Ignoring the shouting from the ground below, terrified of the people at the bottom being those in her dreams, Lydia dug deeper into her mind.

* * *

_Lydia crawled across the tiled flooring, feeling her insides follow her in a trail behind, trying to scramble inside the school. Anywhere to get away from the figure she recognized as Peter now, away from the bland and lifeless stares from the bleachers. It seemed that even though he had no trouble eviscerating her, Peter couldn't catch up to her. Breathing a ragged, thankful breath, Lydia found herself in the halls of the school with the same blood trailing her, only to pull herself forward to see Allison in front of her._

_ She didn't say anything. It didn't even seem to register for Allison – that her best friend was lying on the floor dying. When Lydia grabbed for her shoes, all the other girl did was brush it off and grimace at the dying body beneath her, before walking off to the field._

* * *

Stiles wasn't satisfied with that though, was he? He was already scaling the wall, palms bruised and knees freshly scraped from the mountain Lydia tried to hide in. And here he was with his tear-strewn face, one hand still cupping her face and the other holding onto her like if he let go she would climb even higher. Now she realized the Stiles that ignored her in the dream, the one who didn't listen to her when she asked for help was certainly not this one. This one was real, the real Stiles that loved curly fries and drove a shitty beat-up Jeep and walked into her room uninvited, constantly.

The nights when the Allison in her dreams simply walked away from her were hard, seeing Scott shrug her off after Peter's attacks hurt as well, but they at least seemed to notice her.

* * *

_After an eternity, endless halls with not a soul but those she knew – and the same friends shrugging her off and looking in disgust, before blandly marching off to the stands – there was one last person at what seemed to be the end of the hallway. Stiles was leaning against the wall, tapping his foot impatiently, apparently waiting for something. Lydia managed to pull herself together, literally, up to the wall and rest alongside Stiles. _

_ "You did say you'd be there… that, that you'd be there."_

_ If Stiles heard her, he didn't show it. Maybe he didn't want to see her like this, but he was always trying to tell her she was beautiful, and maybe he just didn't want to see it just to save himself the stress – though he was the one who literally died for his father, so stress was pretty much his forte. He wore his emotions proudly, spoke openly to her for the most part, and didn't shy away from helping people when it really counted. Now here he was not paying any attention at all, as if this were normal. His foot kept tapping, bringing Lydia up an inch or two before dropping again, and before long she couldn't keep up and had to let go of his leg. She fell noiselessly and barely felt herself hit the floor at his feet. Even still there was no reaction. Nothing but silence and impatient tapping._

_ Then he left. Not even a glare or a shaking head. Nothing – as if she were just that._

* * *

"So, you're telling me you didn't talk to me because… I ignored you in your dreams?" Stiles had wiped the watery remnants from his face but he still seemed on the verge of a breakdown as Lydia repeated these dreams to him. Throughout, instead of ignoring her and walking away and leaving her like he did in the dream, leaving her to bleed out, his right hand stayed on her hip. He also seemed to be absent-mindedly rubbing his thumb in circles, and it was strangely comforting – it was that same feeling of relaxation that Stiles always gave her in these moments. When they were talking, alone or even in a crowded street or hall, it was that old peaceful overtone. And now his touch did it too, and made those nightmares seem even crazier than they were at first.

She nodded in response after a few moments, and he hung his head and sighed. Maybe he would be angry? Maybe this was just him trying to get in easy, and it would just be too hard for him? He'd give up, make his way back down the wall and leave the room once and for all. Then, when she needed him most he wouldn't be that same Stiles that was always there. Instead of letting go, he kept his grip and kissed her again. And again. They weren't the same as the one just minutes before: there wasn't the same urgency to them, and Stiles would stop to look at her and attempt a smile. After a few of them, Lydia realized what he was doing – he was trying to gather some courage to say something.

"You need to learn to listen, okay?"

Stiles broke the embrace for just a second, only to wrap his arms around her shoulders and pull her into a deep hug. He was still shaking even after the tears were long gone and he'd said his part and gotten Lydia to talk. Her natural reaction to return the embrace was met by a long shiver and a deep breath before they both stood still and Stiles stopped shaking.

"I, I don't know why I thought that… I was so scared. I didn't want to lose everyone, not all at once," Lydia felt her lips crack with each syllable and her arms began to ache just from staying connected to the tall boy, but there wasn't any chance she'd let go soon. "It just feels like this, this emptiness…"

"Of course it does." Stiles said it matter-of-factly, almost despondent. "It makes sense, Lydia. Think about it – remember what Deaton said about the emotional tether? Well, if he thinks we're that, that uhh, we're that to _each other _then why wouldn't it make sense that we share that darkness that he was talking about?"

"But you didn't exactly try to curl up and die, did you." Lydia could feel an ounce of disgust in her voice, both at herself for being so pathetic to leave herself to wither when she could have talked to any one of her friends and at Stiles for not having to bear this burden. But then he laughed, and it was genuine and made her smile until she realized what he was laughing at.

"Oh, yeah sorry, it's just, well it's just funny that you think I'm not dealing with this too. Every time I say bye to my dad when he goes to work, you know what I feel? I feel like it's the last time I'll see him and I'll get pulled from class; that he got into an accident at work. I feel like I'm constantly out two parents now, and trust me Lydia – it's not easy going on," Stiles showed that determination and will that got him through the sacrifice and tell Lydia to rely on him, and that made him kiss her for reasons beyond a panic attack. He didn't show quite as clearly as he'd like to, but Lydia could sense it. She could feel it, "But I know I've got friends. I've got the best werewolf, slash werewolf-hunter, slash ridiculously good-looking banshee friends I could ask for. And you've got the guy that just said that shtick."

There it was: his first attempt to get a smile out of her. She didn't let him win often on the first try, and now that she thought about it she had always played that game with him. It wasn't something friends did, maybe close friends but what was happening now – those light but powerful kisses followed by the embrace so tight that they had accidentally swayed once or twice – wasn't that same relationship. So she let him get an early victory. They both needed an easy one after this.

* * *

_She woke with her hands and feet feeling the same grass beneath them. The same that always bore her blood by the end of the night, and Lydia refused to open her eyes. She couldn't bear to see those faces again, not after Stiles made sure she knew was there. But what part of this was real, anyways? There was always the chance that she would open her eyes to see her ceiling again, to talk to Stiles the next day and discover none of that night had actually happened. It was just another hope among her worries and fears, as worthless as she felt on that field. And when a hand touched her shoulder, she shook violently trying to escape the teeth and claws again. _

_ But it never came. The hand kept following her, trying to steady her. Silent and stubborn, the hand eventually moved down to hers and grabbed it. There weren't razor sharp nails but the grip was fierce and determined, pulling up on Lydia before another arm wrapped itself around her. She half-wondered why the monster had been so gentle, but she figured if he was trying to lull her into some false security she'd rather face it eyes open. Instead of Peter, though, she found that awkward boy who she'd somehow come to rely on. Not as a crutch, but someone to help her just like he always said. _

_ Then the lights faded from the field and she felt no one beside her anymore. The pitch black threatened to swallow her whole._

* * *

Shooting up immediately, Lydia could already feel her throat tighten. All four walls seemed to squeeze in at breakneck speeds and the pounding in her head continued. There was no one that she could see, even as the pressure increased and increased and never stopped… but then she heard someone talking to her, someone grab her shoulder, and the room deflated enough for her to hear and see Stiles.

"Lydia, it's just a dream. I'm right here, okay?"

"I didn't see you, why'd you leave me here alone?"

"I was in here. I was on the floor, but, I mean, if you want me to join you…" if he wasn't grimacing Lydia swore that would have been a joke and it made her laugh a little. Stiles closed his eyes and shook his head, sighing at Lydia before flopping back down on the floor. After a few minutes, Lydia whispered to Stiles, just in case he had fallen asleep.

"Hey Stiles?"

"Yeah, what's up?" His immediate answer made her bite her lip and smile. Instead of saying anything, Lydia bent over the side of the bed and pulled Stiles up for a brief kiss on the cheek. When she had lain back down, she hadn't noticed that she left her hand dangling over the side of the bed until another reached for it and took hold of it, wrapping fingers around hers. There wasn't any hesitation behind it, and Lydia didn't think twice about taking her turn to play idly with Stiles' hand. And there it was again, right in her chest, that warm feeling of comfort and feeling like everything was actually going right for once. Naively, there was maybe the chance that the madness and chaos around them could be dispelled for a moment. Lydia was going to drink that in for as long as possible.

"Goodnight Stiles," Lydia whispered. The only response was a loud, brief snore. Lydia sighed but found herself smiling before eventually drifting off into a long, dreamless sleep.


	4. Pleasantville, but Not Quite?

**A/N: **I'm the worst at following plans, other than my outlines. I sat on this one for a full two nights, at least. I'm still not promising anything! Plus, it's fun to... well, you'll get it at the end :)

As always, reviews are the coolest and ya'll are already the coolest for reading, but the coolest of the cool review. It's totally a thing. And I guess I should mention that I have no affiliation to the TV series and I don't own any of these characters?

* * *

Stiles didn't want to wake up from his dream. His absolutely amazing, fucking perfect dream where he bit the bullet and kissed Lydia Martin – of course, after the bawling his eyes out part. That was what made it seem so real and made the feeling of waking up in his bed so much worse. At least his soft, silky sheets-

He jerked his head up, looking at the covers and feeling his jaw hang open. He was definitely in bed, but _whose _bed was a different question altogether. He patted down on the bed once, just to make sure it was real, twice – because really, really this couldn't be happening – and the third time was to really come to grips with where he was, and who was lightly snoring beside him. He laughed a little at the sight of Lydia: hand still dangling over the side of the bed, muttering something, all underneath that soft hum he would totally use to mess with her. It was already looking like a good day, but then she rolled over and opened her eyes sleepily, rubbing at them and lazily registering that Stiles was, in fact, in her bed and she sat up instantaneously. Her eyes were wide and she double-checked herself and Stiles, who was secretly hoping that she would have been all right if they weren't wearing any clothes at that second, before dropping back onto the bed.

Following suit and turning to face her, Stiles searched for Lydia's hand under the covers but had accidentally brushed against something that was decidedly not her hand. Instead of doing the sane thing and pulling back his hand, Stiles took another moment to realize he had pretty much groped Lydia's thigh. Outer thigh, he noted to himself to try and hold back a panic attack. Either way, at this point both of their eyes widened further and Stiles, very slowly, withdrew his hand.

"I… uhh, I thought that was your, um, your hand," he muttered dumbly. Lydia, however, didn't scold him or shriek and bring werewolves, terrified mothers, and police down on him. She bit her bottom lip like she always seemed to do around Stiles when she didn't want to show she liked something he was doing, and giggled a little.

"Okay, tiger. Whatever you say," laughing as she got out of bed, she yawned and turned around, "and we'll talk, but I'd like to do that _after _I change, all right?"

"Oh, Jesus." Stiles scrambled out of the bed, flinging limbs every which way in his efforts. After a few seconds of readjusting himself, and Lydia's wonderful laughter filling his ears once again, he made his way out of the room, "I think I should, uh, check in with my dad and stuff anyways, so I'll see you at school?"

She nodded and Stiles took that as his cue to get the hell out. Trying not to scream, he softly bounded his way out to the Jeep still parked awkwardly from his manic drive. Energy seemed to be flowing out of his pores, and before he could even tell that he'd opened his car door, he was already in his own driveway. He had actually accomplished something. In fact, it was more than just that – Lydia was talking and seemed to be totally a-OK with them having managed to end up in bed together, despite whatever she might say later about it never having happened.

So when his dad's car backed out and stopped beside him, and the window rolled down, Stiles didn't hesitate for a moment to immediately dash up to it. The sheriff looked up to his son, smiled and shook his head. But before he could roll the window back up, Stiles broke in,

"Dad, aren't you gonna yell at me? Tell me I should have told you I wasn't coming home? I mean, I could have been in trouble, I might have gotten hurt or…" but he was quickly interrupted,

"I told you to go, Stiles. Besides, the only thing I was worried about was whether you were… you know, prepared." He threw that last bit in with a wink, chuckled, and backed out of the driveway. It took Stiles a moment to process that before he grinned back at his dad.

"You mean sex!" He shouted, pointing an accusatory finger.

"Nope, I was definitely not talking about sex," was the answer from the car, along with another laugh, before it drove off. Stiles kept smiling to himself as he prepared for the coming day, never really stepping down from the high everything the previous night up to now had given him. He just hoped that Lydia was as ecstatic as he was.

The drive to school was open windows, blasting radio, and the broadest smile Stiles had likely ever had on his way there. The day just seemed to be going one-hundred percent his way, and there wasn't any fucking way that he was going to let something crazy get in the way of it. After having parked – actually parked this time – he bounced his way in through the front doors, and he could feel a literal bounce in his steps. Scott definitely noticed it, because his goofy smile and raised eyebrow asked enough questions without him even talking.

"Don't even say anything. I don't care what gopher Derek dug up last night, I'm just going to enjoy this day without having to worry about what plan you and Cujo are cooking up." Stiles didn't even let him answer, and tried to walk past him before his best friend pulled him back – which seemed to be alarmingly easy.

"Dude," Scott looked him in the eyes as if that were a real question, "It worked?"

"I'm a gentleman, I don't kiss and tell," Stiles replied, bowing a little and adjusting his invisible monocle.

"Yeah, because you totally didn't ask _me _for help on this. I should at least get to know, man." Scott didn't look like he was going to back down anytime soon, and Stiles needed another person to talk about this with anyways. He still hesitated because he didn't think it would be fair to Lydia to spill her reasons for holing up. If she wanted to tell them, she would do it herself. She would tell them when she was ready, like the regular Lydia would.

"Okay, we talked." Scott's reaction was eyebrows raised and an otherwise bland expression. This continued for a few seconds, neither of them saying anything, before Stiles eventually broke down, "All right, I might have – may have – kind of slept with her. Not the way you're thinking, unfortunately. It was sorta; she had some things to say and I slept over at her place."

Despite him having denied anything sexual happening, Scott still beamed at his friend and give him the closest thing he could to a congratulations either of their completely manly egos could take:

"Awesome."

* * *

It really was amazing, and Stiles couldn't stop thinking about it. Even with the aftershocks of the Deucalion debacle still shifting around, especially now with his theory about the darkness spreading between the links, having this between them was incredible to him. That even in this awful night there was still a little bit of light. When the pair of boys walked into Physics – sans teacher _and _former substitute – and Stiles paired up with Lydia, all Scott did was pat him on the back. Smiling to his friend, he turned to Lydia who was staring ardently at what seemed to be a completely blank piece of paper. Trying to get her attention, it took a few seconds for her to look up and face him. They both quickly averted the others' gaze, and Stiles suddenly felt like whatever he did was wrong. That maybe him being so excited wasn't completely valid and that the previous night was another one of Lydia's mistakes that she would shrug off. But that quickly went away when she turned to him, and spoke very quietly.

"H-Hey, Stiles." Lydia Martin was stammering. At him. She was nervous about something, and the only thing in their recent history definitely had to do with the bed situation. It was so strange feeling the roles reversed and seeing her awkwardly scratch at the back of _her _neck, and furrow her brow as if she was rethinking what she said just then and wanted to re-do that bit of the conversation.

"Ms. Martin?" The substitute was evidently taking roll. Lydia answered politely and raised her hand, and the balding man swiveling Harris's chair around scribbled something on a pad of paper. Then it took a few moments for Stiles to work up the courage to actually ask her about whatever awkwardness was here, and the bright excitement from the morning was quickly fading.

"Do you want to talk about this? Or, well, us? I mean, that's assuming there is-"

"Mr. Stilinski?" Stiles grunted in response and raised his hand lazily without even acknowledging the substitute, which was answered itself by a harrumph from the substitute and a furious scribble.

"I really don't know what to call this, but we can talk about it after class," Lydia answered matter-of-factly. She seemed to have lost the stammer, and he hoped that being so forward was getting him somewhere again. After all the ground he'd covered the night before it would have killed him to have Lydia ignore him once again.

She nodded to him, pursed her lips and gave his hand a brief squeeze before looking back up to the substitute, who had begun on the day's lecture. If there was any thought that they were going to go back to the previous weeks' pattern of being terrified about what was happening to her, that light touch was enough to kick that thought in the ass. This was looking to be a really, _really _good day.

* * *

After class, and having to endure Scott's prodding and joking before saying bye to the two of them, Lydia managed to pull Stiles alongside a row of lockers outside the classroom. His heart was pounding at this point, wondering – even after deciding it wouldn't – if there was going to be some emotional complication that would make her rethink ever reacting to Stiles the way she had. It was always possible she was easing him into the 'you're a great guy, but just not _my _guy' speech. Then she'd smile sadly, a fake sadness, and go about her day. They'd still be friends, she'd still be talking again, and that'd be enough for him. So Stiles stood tall and looked her in the eyes, willing to take whatever was about to come his way. Instead of starting that speech, or really saying anything, she grabbed both of his hands and stepped up to plant a chaste kiss on his lips. Another simple little peck, but it answered just about every question and made his heart pound straight up into his head with excitement – this was a public place, and Lydia just made it known to just about anyone that cared that that kiss just happened.

"Does that answer your question?" She tossed her hair over her shoulder, and pulled Stiles along by his hand. He stumbled for a second, mouth still hanging open in a stupid grin, before catching up and gleefully swinging the intertwined hands back and forth. If the kiss wasn't public enough, he was going to parade this around school for as long as possible. Every few seconds, in-between trying to steal glances at each other, they would occasionally catch each other and smirk. This kept going on all the way to the cafeteria, including things like a very disgruntled Aiden and a group of girls sniggering at the pair of them. No one seemed to bother them, however, and Stiles was feeling himself excited just to eat lunch. Mostly because Lydia was talking again, but the hand-holding and the brief kiss outside of class were probably helping that.

Sitting at lunch, across from each other, there didn't seem to be much to talk about. So it wasn't too long before he broke the silence, fidgeting all the while under the table with his hands.

"You said we'd talk about this – us. Let's do it. Talk. Let's talk. Not _do it_, but I mean yeah let's talk," Stiles was tapping his feet incessantly now and could feel his voice falter and shake. Lydia shook her head, giving him the pouty 'you're such an idiot' face.

"You're such an idiot," she grumbled while shaking her head, "I don't know about you, but it feels… different, you know? Maybe it's just the fresh relationship smell, or whatever you want to call it, but I don't know…"

"It could just be that you really, really – I mean _really _– like me." Stiles conjectured with his trademark shit-eating grin, "Which I don't blame you for. I like me a whole lot too."

"I'm sure you do, sweetheart." Lydia bit her lip and added, with what sounded like a sultry tone but Stiles was so high in the moment it might have been sarcasm, "But remember, you don't have to be alone in _that _anymore."

Stiles's eyes widened before he hung his head and chuckled. If this was a dream, he didn't want to ever ever, ever, ever get out of it and he'd rather be in this coma than deal with what's outside. Was it selfish of him, he thought? Hell yeah it was, but if you're living in any world – dream or not – where Lydia Martin pretty much gives you the keys to the front door, you don't complain. It was pretty simple. Before he could come back with a quick retort, oh he desperately wanted this talk to go somewhere that involved skipping class and seeing where this newfound connection would go, the rest of the 'pack' filled in the chairs around them. Scott and Allison were beaming and asking Lydia a bunch of mundane, pointless questions, and Isaac excused himself and went to grab food.

"So, Scott told me you were just in full SAT mode?" Allison proffered, and Stiles gave Scott a quick thumbs-up before returning to listen to Lydia blather about some specific rubric they had switched around or whatever, "Well I'm glad we've got Lydia back, it was getting really lonely around here."

"Rude," Scott threw out, nudging at her side, "You had me and Stiles and Isaac."

"And you guys aren't my best friend, are you?" She asked, shrugging and wrapping an arm around Lydia, who quickly glanced at Stiles and they both smiled again. Allison seemed to have caught it, because she looked with questioning eyes between the two of them a few times before turning fully to face Lydia, arms crossed, "Wait. So, Scott tells me you and Stiles are studying and when I text you there's no answer. Because you're 'studying' of course. Lydia Martin would _never _answer a text when she's doing something as important as studying."

The inflection on that last word, the smug look and the half-grin that Allison had made Stiles uncomfortable, and when he looked to Scott for help he was just trying not to laugh out loud. He tensed up, for what reason he couldn't tell other than this felt an awful lot like an impromptu interrogation and an Argent at the head of that terrified him in strange ways, but Lydia seemed calm when she met the brunette's questioning with her chin held high and arms folded herself. Something about this felt like it was going to end in a way Stiles didn't really want to deal with. Rather than say anything Lydia walked around the table to where he was, scooted him over, and grabbed his hand from under the table. She rubbed her thumb over his knuckles a few times and proceeded to slam their locked fingers onto it. Her raised eyebrows and smile said, plainly, 'Your point being?'

Stiles found something discharge in him when her thumb went across his knuckles. It was a sort of burst of the same energy he felt that morning, and decided to respond by laying his head on Lydia's shoulder, fluttering his eyelids seductively at the pair in front of him. After a moment of that he brought his head back up and looked at Allison, straight in the eyes. Even if it was just an overexcited friend, being able to do this without exploding in spastic half-speech and fragments felt almost as good as that charge of adrenalin.

"Huh." Isaac had re-joined them at last and set his tray on the table, not taking his eyes off the pair of them while he sat down, "That's definitely, well, new."

"Isaac, are you ever on the same page as us?" Lydia asked sincerely.

"Well, there was that one time… I did; hey I sided with Scott before Derek did." He punctuated that with a large bite of his sandwich, chewing triumphantly. Stiles stared at him blankly before shrugging agreement and going back to his food, of course while trying to maintain that grip – that lifelink – with Lydia under the table. During their idle talk, Stiles had let go for a moment because he thought his hand was getting too sweaty only for Lydia to place her hand on his thigh and look at him blankly. Like it was nothing at all. Nah, totally nothing.

It wasn't Lydia Martin literally inches from his crotch.

* * *

After an entire afternoon of holding hands, actually having conversations beyond just what the new horrible supernatural terror in town was, and having Lydia around again at all, Stiles didn't know if he wanted it to stop. He didn't know if he'd wake up the next morning and get the same speech he was fearing in Physics: the speech that crippled that energy and brought a little more of that darkness on him. But he couldn't stay at Lydia's every night – keyword every, he reminded himself – so he had to believe that the crazy strawberry blonde wouldn't have a change of heart overnight.

Right before starting his Jeep, off to a foreign land of No-Lydia, the passenger door opened and in came said girl who greeted him with a deeper kiss than before. There was tongue, Stiles remembered. Everything before, after, and in the middle was kind of a blur. It was minty blur, but not the clinical mint; it had a hint of chocolate and holy shit it tasted good.

"Hi," he said with a stupid grin and half-lidded eyes.

"Yeah, hi," she nodded in response, looking at him strangely before pointing at the keys already in the ignition. It took Stiles an instant to follow her finger and chuckled, mumbling something about thighs, starting up his car. A clanking, whirring rumble followed them all the way to the Martin place, but that didn't stop their conversation. Stiles didn't even remember half of what he said, he just knew that being able to talk to Lydia again, being even more open, was probably the coolest thing ever. It didn't hurt that she kept leaving her hand on his thigh and playing with his shifting hand.

When they approached the house he made sure to actually line his Jeep up right, not to look like it was the blitz of tears and fear that happened before. Inspiration struck Stiles as she gave him another brief kiss on the cheek, and he jumbled the question together when she hopped off the seat and out of the car.

"Hey Lydia, you should totally come over and have dinner with me and my dad sometime. He really wants to know what's keeping his son off his computer. Driving him nuts," Stiles added at the end, swirling a finger around his ear and shrugging noncommittally. It was probably the closest to a smooth operator he had ever been in his life, but Lydia still gave that annoyed snort and incredulous pouting lip.

"I'm not doing anything tonight, you know," she said evenly.

"Oh, shit. Well, I'll come back at 8. I'll just pick you up and we can, have a..." Stiles trailed off, feeling that awkward shake to his voice come back.

"It's a date," Lydia finished, smiling broadly. He returned it and nodded, said goodbye and drove off with what felt like doubled heart rate and more excitement than he'd ever felt. What a fucking day it was.

* * *

It was 7 o'clock, and Stiles was already pacing around the house. Literally, he had walked up and down the stairs fifteen times before walking back and forth in the kitchen for a few minutes. He'd asked his dad if he should dress formally, and decided that just wearing what he had been at school – the jeans and t-shirt – with a jacket over top would have to do. What was he doing worrying about clothes anyways? A ripped sock wasn't going to send her running for the hills, but maybe it would? And that drove Stiles insane, trying to leave those maybe's unanswered without pulling his hair out and screaming.

When he had finished his final lap of the living room around 7:40, his phone vibrated in his pocket. His fingers twitched when they unlocked the screen, and he could feel restlessness in his legs – maybe he should just get a quick jog in before going over – when he pulled up the text from Scott. Stiles lifted his head up, shouted to his dad that he was leaving and he'd be back with Lydia a bit later than he thought, and sprinted out of the door. His arm felt like it was about come straight out of the socket when he yanked the driver side door of his Jeep open, that one sentence text getting him in a furious panic beyond what he had been feeling just minutes ago.

_From: Wolf-boy_

_ Get to the clinic its abt lydia_


	5. Beyond Two People

Of course this would happen. Why shouldn't it? Every time Stiles ever got anywhere close to finding some normalcy in his life, in jumped Dr. Druid and his lupine cavalry. Now his seemingly once-in-a-lifetime chance to just _hang out _with Lydia was saying goodbye, and quickly. A simple little dinner date was starting to look like the catalyst for another half-formed scheme, one he had no clue about. That's what made him feel twitchy – he didn't know what the plan was. He didn't know how Lydia fit into this, how he did, or if it was even anything at all worth worrying about. Scott hadn't said anything about werewolves for weeks to any of them. There wasn't some cavalcade of monsters falling onto Beacon Hills. It was just a strange, eerie quiet that had fallen over the town.

He didn't want to dwell on the part where Scott said it was about her, though. The quick text was enough to get him ready to hurl and thinking about it made him more nervous. His hands shook as he tightened his grip around the steering wheel, trying to push back the fluttering heart rate and queasy feeling shooting up through his body. Managing this kept him preoccupied all the way to the clinic and he flew into the brightly lit examination room to find Deaton and Scott, both looking worried. Scott was the first to notice him, Deaton the first to recognize his ragged breathing and frantically searching eyes.

"Stiles, calm down. Lydia's fine. She's at Derek's." Scott tried to reassure him, but the last sentence seemed to only make him angrier. His hands were clenching into fists one second then hanging by his side another, until he started patting his jeans like an impatient child. He felt like a child, being left in the dark about something he should have been told immediately.

"Why? Why is she at Derek's, Scott? What did you do? If-" Stiles whined before being interrupted.

"Take a deep breath, Stiles." Deaton interjected, and attempted to guide him to a seat, "She called Allison after she saw something watching her through her windows. Scott took her to Derek's, she'll be safe."

Stiles barely calmed down at Deaton's claims and a sharp spike felt like it was being driven into his side. Why hadn't she called him? Oh that's right. He's just Stiles: the human with no claws or awesome sharpshooting skills. He shrugged it off however, still feeling that overpowering worry about what was watching her. What being the operating word – if Lydia sensed that it wasn't just some creepy pre-teen down the street trying to sneak a peek, he believed her. It was another sensation he couldn't really explain – he just trusted her implicitly.

"Okay… okay, so then why not text me that? I almost went out of my mind driving over here, guys." Stiles wondered all at once if this wasn't some sort of intervention. The annoying lights and the concerned medical professional made it seem so surreal, like he was being prepared for an interrogation about some nefarious habit he had. It wasn't like hanging out with a girl was anything worth getting so crazy about.

"What I want to know is… how are you dealing with, well with life right now?" Deaton's eyebrow raised and he scratched at his scraggly beard, invoking all the inquisitiveness of a creepy Obi-Wan. Stiles sputtered a bit, not quite sure how to answer something that felt trivial in the moment, before Deaton asked again, "All right, let me be plainer: have there been times you just couldn't feel… anything?"

The question seemed easy enough to answer. Of course he hadn't, there wasn't any point in time where he'd been so concerned with it. The occasional hiss of a black viper in his mind, but then he'd remind himself that his Dad was still alive, or that he'd kissed Lydia. Now it was more of the latter, but he had told himself over and over again that not worrying about his dad and making out with what passed for a regular girl in his group was just fine. No harm, no foul right? He'd just think of her soft, warm lips…

But then it hit him all at once – his theory. Everything she was seemingly struggling with, acting bizarrely and totally detached from anyone and everyone. It was the same he'd felt the first few days after the sacrifices were thwarted. It was the type of emptiness you don't just gloss over. There had to be some explanation for it, and Stiles wasn't going to just shrug _that _off.

"No, but I know someone who has." Now he felt like such an idiot, for reasons he couldn't quite tell. Transferring his own issues into Lydia wasn't something he consciously did. The last thing he would have done was that, to be honest. The thought made his still weak stomach quiver, briefly threatening to expel whatever was still sitting there. He had only thought of the positive side of sharing such a strong bond with her. Scott shifted his feet around, stretching his neck nervously, trying not to catch Stiles's eyes. Even if he was an Alpha, he was still a dumb teenager with the most obvious tells.

"So that's what this is about. I didn't know that would happen, that I'd… I'd give Lydia my bad mojo or whatever." He didn't know why he felt the need to defend himself – Scott wasn't going to argue that Stiles was also a stupid teenager with a fantasy crush coming to life before his eyes, and Deaton was the first one to call out what he saw as an emotional tie. It was clear they still stood by those stances, because Scott sighed and the older man just chuckled.

"I'm not saying you did. But now I know it happened," he tapped his chin once again before continuing, "I know you're thinking the same thing too: that this tether isn't a one-way street, and you'd be correct. It's also much harder than that, unfortunately."

Something still didn't sit right in his head. Everything seemed to be focused around Stiles, and that was probably the most uncomfortable feeling possible. If it was true that his relationship with her was some sort of complex function of their swirling, stupid teenage hormones then why wouldn't it apply to the others as well? He had a whole series of questions, each valid and reasonable, ready to launch. Instead, he fired off the first thing that sounded good.

"Wait a sec, so why are Scott and Allison bright eyes and sunshine?" When it came out he knew it was stupid. Lydia had confronted him in much the same way, and now here he was spitting the same thing back in Scott's face like it would protect him from having to possibly sever his steadily growing bond with Lydia. He didn't let Scott answer – only mumbling an apology before nodding back to Deaton.

"Stiles, we all have that darkness to deal with. Scott and Allison are dealing, but in their own ways. Scott and I have worked together a long time now, our connection's strong. Allison and Isaac-" Scott snorted, kicking at the floor, "are dealing with many of the same issues you and Lydia are. Only…" he trailed off, looking downward. He seemed to confer with some imaginary text before shaking his head and continuing, "Only you're different Stiles."

Well there's a shocker. Stiles laughed quietly.

"Okay, if that wasn't rude or anything," he scoffed, brushing at a his jeans in hopes that he would just wake up from a nap to see a girl walk down the driveway and hop into his Jeep, make crass jokes with his dad, and fall asleep on his couch before he'd drive her home. Then she'd refuse and they'd have sex and the whole nine. Either way it would have been a whole lot better than this awkward discussion.

"No, you and Lydia – you're different from the rest of the pack. You experience things differently than them. Your emotions, they are so _strong _Stiles. To be honest, I've never seen anything like it – it's like you've elevated yourself beyond a regular human just by being part of this, by being under Scott's leadership. It changed you, and it's changing your connection to Lydia."

"So the bond's more sensitive?" Stiles guessed, to which the veterinarian nodded vigorously.

"Exactly, whereas with Scott and I there's already a mutual understanding and neither of us are particularly romantically interested in the other. I hope," and Scott looked at him in confusion before letting a tense laugh out, "Good. Allison and Isaac, well they're distinctly isolationists. Their bond is something far less intertwined between the two of them. It's not something either of them is really aware of from what I can tell, at least yet."

"You're saying I have to be careful about… what, exactly?" Now his head was starting to hurt. It was like a bad English class all over again with all of this figurative speech that didn't seem to connect to anything tangible. Before he could struggle answering that question himself, he was saved from another migraine.

"About what you two share and how you interact. What's happening is something that old Celtic magic and lore doesn't describe quite often. I don't even know if there's a specific name for it – I've only read brief references – but when two people can form a connection this powerful under the right circumstances-"

"Like when the Nemeton did its thing when we were dead…" Stiles muttered.

"Under those circumstances, it's a bond that has truly come back from death. You're not just two people anymore Stiles, it's much more than that," he finished.

Deaton's words were frightening. Stiles really, really did like Lydia. A lot – a whole fucking hell of a lot to be honest – but this was beginning to sound like some mushy romanticism disguised as old folklore, to give it a less dorky sheen than it already had. He didn't know if he _loved _her. Yeah, saying it out of context about her was easy enough, but even Stiles wasn't that childish. There had been a time where this was feeding every fantasy he could concoct, but the recent events of the last year and a half had instilled a cynicism in him that was starting to mar the idyllic crush's glamour.

"Listen, you have to be careful about this, Stiles. Your theory was very nearly correct, you two don't just share it – you can _actively _share it. It's a give and take, and sometimes you can unconsciously do it as well. Like you must have done before," he finished. Deaton had that excited look about him of getting to explore some concept that he hadn't yet been able to. It was a special kind of old man weird, Stiles noted.

His comment about Stiles actively putting his weight on her shoulders was more disarming, however. Everything about him, every fiber that made up his quirk-filled being hated that notion. The idea that he could have, without even realizing it, caused Lydia's nightmares to increase and become more and more overwhelming scared him. He balled his hand into a fist, trying to strengthen his nerves once again. It was right then he wished he could just hold Lydia's hand for a second. That always seemed to help…

"Wait, so it's not just some figurative thing here right? I mean, if I say, felt some sort of… push, when I do something with her-" Deaton's eyebrows shot up and his lips curled into a smile which Scott copied, adding in a laugh, "I meant holding her hand. Thanks for making me sound even more like a ten-year old girl. Awesome."

"Stiles, that's it though. That's the physical response! I'd have hoped you were on the same page here. See, this isn't all some theoretical, magical mumbo-jumbo. There's an intimate action you two share, even something as simple as that hand holding, that's the key. It makes you both stronger – it makes that darkness feel insignificant, right?"

He recalled what it was like the first time he had been publicly swinging Lydia's tightly clasped hand in that hallway. Everything about that moment felt different. Seeing her ruby lips turn up into a smile, those eyes fire off neurons in his head that told him that he was happier than he'd been in a long time, it was pretty much as close to perfect as he thought it'd ever get. It wasn't just some high from that boyhood crush being realized – he felt like that oppressive bleakness was gone. The dark tendrils that threatened him in Physics were stopped by that very same thing, and then returned only because then it had been such a quick grasp. It had come back up right before class had ended and then gone away again… right when they held hands and kissed. Maybe it was love? Perhaps there was a small chance she felt the same, since Deaton mentioned the one-to-one nature.

"So, if I'm feeling… whatever the hell this is, and I managed to pull Lydia back just by holding her hand, then she has to feel the same right?" His question seemed feeble, almost pathetic. Minutes ago he was worried about her throat being ripped out, and now he wondered if she had the same 'tingly feeling' about him.

"We've been over this. If she didn't, then she would never have been sent into a depression because of you." Well that was blunt, he thought. It still answered his question and Stiles was beginning to feel better about this doctor's visit. There was another thing weighing on his mind though, so he voiced it.

"What happens if we; say we don't have this connection anymore?"

"That's complicated. On one hand I think it would take a great deal to break what's already forming between you two, and on the other I can only guess. I would say that the flow would stop, so to speak. If one partition breaks, then the whole flows into one. There's no way telling what would happen, but-" Stiles could feel a hammer pounding at his head, shouting the response out.

"Worst case scenario: I move on and Lydia has my weight on her shoulders," he said darkly.

The only reply was a sobering nod, and more spastic pounding of his heart and head. Maybe he should just pick Lydia up and have dinner with her anyways, pretending like the last hour never even happened at all. He could promise himself that nothing _would_ happen, but in Beacon Hills that was probably the biggest jinx he could throw at himself. Something always happened nowadays. Tomorrow his amazing dinner-date might have been watching her bleed out, or getting his head chopped off. Every single one of them could be dead the next morning after being so aloof to the literal supernatural beacon the place was slowly becoming.

Scott gave him the usual concerned look, followed by the old-fashioned pat on the shoulder. Stiles nodded, understanding the support there without needing to look up. There were still questions unanswered, questions he wanted to ask, but Scott's phone vibrated. Concern spread across Stiles's face, he knew it by his friend's reaction, when he heard brief spurts of conversation that sounded like Derek. A worried, frantic Derek: the kind of Derek that only came out when danger was beating the shit out of him.

There were some queries thrown out by Scott, some inaudible and others monosyllabic. When he had hung up, there was no way to tell what was going on from Scott's face. He looked equal parts worried and angry. There was a brief flash of red in his eyes before he pulled at Stiles, dragging him away from the clinic. Deaton seemed to knowingly nod at Scott, who may as well have carried Stiles over to the Jeep in the parking lot.

"Get to Derek's. Fast."

* * *

"Stiles, just trust me on this one. Nothing happened to her." Scott grumbled, looking like he was another sentence away from killing Stiles just on principle.

This was the argument that had been going on between the two of them during the car ride over to the loft in town that Derek refused to give up for whatever reason. Stiles would fidget, ask a dumb question and then fall back to thinking about what Deaton had said. He was starting to think that maybe he was actually in love with her. Maybe his crush was actually evolving, and that whatever they had shared was something of that magnitude, of that same level of seriousness as love. It was also pretty incredible to think that she felt the same way, even after her being the one who initiated most of the non-tear filled embraces and kisses. He just figured she had gotten really good at hiding the fact that she thought of him as another distraction, and that he'd given up hoping for that. Stiles was just gonna ride the easy train and take in what he could get.

"I mean, what if- what about Deucalion? You let him off the hook, maybe he came back?" Stiles had already perused this and more options, and none of them made any sense at the end of the day. It wasn't Derek, he was Scott's beta now and doing anything to hurt her would have been a grave mistake. There weren't any rogue wolves out that Scott could sense, and Peter had been at Derek's doing whatever detail was entrusted to him. Most likely snooping around to find whatever was creeping on Lydia.

"Seriously, dude. If you ask me that again, I'm just gonna kill myself and get it over with."

"At least your sense of hu-"

Then a whisper hit Stiles, causing him to stop talking. It was so very quiet. It was familiar, but he couldn't place it over the whir of the engine and sounds of the nightlife emanating around him. Even the other boy seemed to hear something before his eyes widened and he turned to Stiles. Suddenly Stiles could hear it too and along with it there was a violent heat rising in his chest. It was clear at that point what it was. It was a scream. The wail of death's messenger herself: the cry of a banshee.

* * *

**A/N: **I think these fit better at the end, don't you? Anyways, this is as far as my outline went, so there's going to be a real waiting period between this and the next chapter as I solidify everything. But don't fret, I have everything in my noggin - which I was pointing at, to no one in particular - and I just need to lay it down on a document. At the same time, I have a bunch of projects to do and I'm, in fact, late for one at the very moment.

Leave reviews, give me motivation. Motivation = more Stydia. More Stydia = better life. Thanks!


	6. Fragments

**A/N: **I do truly like the notes at the end, but I just wanted to explain for anyone that doesn't pick up on it that the first half of this chapter coincides with the big infodump with Deaton last chapter up to the part where Lydia screams bloody murder.

As always, review and my spirits can soar higher than ever before. Or something like that. I don't know. Just don't call Jeff Davis on me or anything, none of this is related to his one TV show thing this may/may not be based on. So, read on friends!

* * *

Lydia had to note that the chilly, uncomfortably dark loft still bothered her as much as it did over the previous year. The open space held all of its light in the center, allowing the corners to sit in muddy darkness and leave her wondering what might lurk in them. Windows let in whatever moonlight was available, but still centered the shafts in whitish trails onto the pale circle at the heart of the loft. She expected to hallucinate like she assumed she had when the black mass stared at her through the glass of her kitchen window. Then, when it reappeared outside of her bedroom window and never broke eye-contact, she scrambled to call someone. Her first instinct was to get hold of Stiles, but if this was real – if a werewolf or something else was stalking her – then she might as well have signed his death sentence. So Allison was the next in line and the creature seemed to be focusing on her more intently, as if it were listening to her conversation. When she said the other girl's name softly, the golden eyes seemed to squint and the form leapt from the roof and bounded away across her lawn.

And now she was staring into a dark corner expecting gold to flash from inside of it and feel her blood spill out from her chest. Expectant of the shadow, her thoughts began to wander. At first it was if her nightmares, those dreams from the bond, had any connection to this and if it were all some hysterical hallucination. She'd wake up in her bed, and everything that happened the last few days would just disappear. Life would be normal again, or as close to normal as she could get. Then there was the one niggling variable that would return to her previous 'normal.'

Stiles.

If it were all some horrible dream, then going back would mean losing him. Maybe that was it? The real Stiles couldn't be as incredible as this one, could he? She'd built him up into some caricature of her partial knowledge; into some kind of hyperaware superhuman. Any minute she'd wake up, still snuggling to her purple sheets wondering if getting up was really worth it. Lydia squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation of the oncoming reality. She even pinched herself and afterwards remarked how stupid that idea was.

But why shouldn't he be 'real?' Unless she had dreamt literally every passing conversation and heartfelt one-to-one they had, Stiles had a heart of gold with a little chink in it designated specifically for her. Why was it so impossible that someone who was interested in her was actually interested in _her_, and not just her looks or her previous willingness to hop into bed? If it had all been a perfect dream, then she'd rather stay asleep. Selfishly she chose to ignore the fact that this meant there might be another Stiles still pining after her, still hoping, when all he had to do was pick his balls up and kiss her like the possibly-dream-possibly-real Stiles had.

"I can't be going insane. I'm too coherent, but isn't that what the mentally ill tell themselves?" She muttered to no one in particular, pulling her lips in tight consternation.

There were few times that Lydia's thoughts sent her into a spiral of confusion, losing track of where she was. Here all she could remember was dancing around the topic of Stiles. She knew exactly how he felt – he literally spoke his heart every time they talked. But there had been times Lydia deceived him or manipulated him, times when she felt guilty and horrible at her actions that were, in the grand scheme of things, minor. If Stiles felt so strongly about her, and she could feel that same heat rising in her chest whenever she thought about it, then what did she feel? Even with Jackson it hadn't felt like this; like this strong link. But there it was, somehow whatever miniscule relationship they had was surging outward more and more until the two overlapped and that first kiss happened. Lydia always felt on edge around Jackson, like she had to lower herself in order to keep his ego intact. She never blamed him for it. She always pitied his reliance on achievement as a standard for love. Stiles had none of that – or at least he didn't seem to live off of it. When she had cheered him into a winning lacrosse game, it hadn't been the attraction to the winning team that made her continue yelling his name, it was the strange pride she felt at watching that kid so prone to flailing around in his chairs lead a team to victory.

And when she went after him and saw his beaten and bruised face, they didn't speak about the game. There was no mention that Stiles was technically the star player, and that Lydia always dated 'winners.' That thought never crossed her mind that night. Seeing his dried blood smeared across his face was enough to drive whatever childish thoughts out of her head. Instead, she only thought about what would happen if Stiles hadn't come back. Where would that have left her? Her willingness to open up, to what had been affectionately termed the Pack, was almost entirely due to him. Would her introversion eventually reach the same point, even without Stiles?

"But if his theory's correct, _he _did that to _me_." The venomous words felt strange on her tongue. Accusing Stiles felt wrong, even if it were technically true, "Without that, however, we wouldn't have; we couldn't have…"

She kept searching for the word. Gotten together was her first input, but that held such a poor connotation that it immediately left her mind. Lydia liked him, but it just wasn't a strong enough word to describe this. So was it love? Was it the dread L-word that scared her just as much as most boys her age when their girlfriends, in a fit of rampant teenage hormones, said it to them with no abandon?

"It feels right, though. Something about being with him, that charge of adrenalin. It's…"

"Talking to yourself, no that's great," Derek interrupted her soliloquy with a raised eyebrow and what seemed to be a look of concern. It had to have been a misconstrued stoic grimace, however. Derek Hale showed empathy when he expected a pity party, and Lydia was in no mood for his skulking personality. He could walk around his apartment – if that's what you wanted to call it – all he wanted, but she had more pressing matters to think about. Like whether this strange reality was, in fact, real at all.

"Where is everyone, actually? Allison dropped me off here and now…" she trailed off, glancing at the shadowy corner in front of her. No matter what she told herself, the black swathe still gave her shivers and made for a sinister overtone to the place, "Now I'm left with you and… who else?"

"Peter," he answered gravely, anticipating her reaction of blinking and a poorly-hidden shaky breath. Those nightmares were going to follow her for a long time, it seemed.

"And where is he?" She spelled out for him, nodding her head in rhythm with the syllables. She had given up on her analysis of the reality in her current state, feeling her head pound steadily in aggravation and desperation at the thought of it all being a fucking dream.

"I don't know," he broke his stare and seemed to be considering something.

"And that doesn't strike you as strange, like at all? The werewolf who used me to resurrect him just happens to be missing when I'm being stalked by something that looks _suspiciously like a werewolf_." Now it was anger in her words, and this Lydia could deal with. This was her forte.

"Yeah, that's what we thought…" Derek said, his words falling off into long stretches of what sounded like random fragments, some syllables she could catch but nothing coherent. He pulled his phone out and jabbed in a number, his breaths quickening and his muscles seeming to tighten under the dim moonlight. Whatever had crossed his mind wasn't whether some boy felt some 'tingly feelings' about her. Or him. Lydia had lost track of the metaphor and tried instead to listen to the conversation going on now.

"Scott, I need you over here now." There was break where she assumed he was answered, "Yes, I'm pretty sure it's; yes."

Whatever Derek was going to say it seemed that Scott interrupted him. At least Stiles knew Derek's assumptions, she thought, and that sent her into another worrying frenzy. If Scott knew who or what was following Lydia that meant that Stiles most likely did too, which meant he would dive headfirst in front of the thing the first chance he had. She knew him by know, at least knew him that well to know he was selfless – and stupid – enough to do something like that, be it werewolf or darach or whatever craziness Beacon Hills could spew out at them.

No more than ten minutes had passed when Derek perked up, his face now indistinguishable from a crazed animal's. He looked up, giving brief inhales in every direction, before looking back at Lydia and cocking his head. Then a tightness gripped Lydia's heart, squeezing at her chest and threatening to expel her chest cavity outward. A cavernous voice yelled _into _her, and she subconsciously translated it as she had every time before, into that old familiar call. Her mouth opened wide and out poured a hellish scream.

* * *

Stiles could feel his breaths quicken, his heart rate flutter between rapid and near-explosive, and the sudden urge to tap his feet and crack his neck and fingers over and over again wasn't helping things. If his high from the day prior weren't still attached to his short-term memory he was certain a panic attack would have followed and the two of them would end up crashed miles outside of their destination. Scott kept trying his best to calm him, even trying his little 'healing' spiel to no success.

"She screamed, that means she's not dead right?" Stiles felt the concern in his voice when his pitch rose a tiny bit near the end of the sentence, "She can't be dead. She _finds _the dead bodies, she isn't one…"

"Who said she was dead?" Scott blurted out angrily, getting frustrated at his friend for no real reason. If his mother was on the other end instead of Lydia, nothing would have stopped him from getting there as soon as possible and he'd be asking the same questions Stiles was. After that Stiles shut up but his nerves and muscles didn't stop shaking and preparing for what could, and probably would, literally kill him. He had to be careful of his thoughts, he remembered, trying to recall Deaton's words about what the negative energy between him and Lydia could do to either of them. So he just kept repeating his favorite fantasies over and over in his head over the duration of the drive until they had been rushing up stairs to Derek's hole in the wall.

Just like that, it had worked. Thinking about her had softened his nervousness and let Stiles steel himself for whatever they were going to find, which he now found himself adamantly denying that it would be Lydia's dead body. If it wasn't love he didn't really care, it was a really damn good feeling. He clutched at nothing with his right hand, trying to imagine the feel of Lydia's soft palms and playful touch when they did hold hands. That was the key, he remembered, and even the idea of it sent a small chill up his spine. Resolved to confront whatever this was, the two boys made their way to the loft. Halfway through the climb, the faint but distinct smell of blood filled the air and Stiles had to take another deep breath to calm himself before continuing. The ten or so flights had seemed like the longest experience of his life, a continuous never-ending spiral torture chamber, constantly sending him back to the beginning so that when this hypothetical Lydia screamed for his help the only thing he could do was keep climbing. He'd be trapped in an endless cycle, but none of that happened. They found their way to the doorway, nodding to each other before Scott pulled the door open.

The smell of blood was combined with the light of the moon falling onto a pool of blood that stretched away from the center of the room towards a smashed window. Someone had been dragged, fighting the whole time if the ragged strips of flesh and clothing on the windowpane told anything. Other than that, there was no sound coming from anywhere in the room. Stiles couldn't take it anymore.

"Lydia!" he shouted into the darkness, heartbeat speeding up with each passing second of no response. The soft blowing of wind ran throughout the room, spreading debris across the floor. Then there was something – the faint _clack _of heels. Out of one of the darker corners came the girl, eyes wide and terrified. Her arms were crossed, but she didn't have any visible damage. When she came into view, the dying light of the night reflecting off of her still bright red lips, Stiles rushed forward and pulled her into a viselike death-grip. He could feel hot tears come up and, reacting instantly, he made to grab Lydia's hand. Like Deaton had said, they both seemed to calm down: the tears never reached Stiles's face and Lydia's frightened stare melted into a sad smile. If Scott hadn't been there Stiles remarked that this would have been a pretty good time to say whatever his inner-romantic wanted to spill out here.

"Are you okay?" He asked first, and she squeezed his hand before nodding slowly.

"I don't know; I, I don't know what I saw. Something black, a big black… something took Derek," she looked over to Scott who had been sniffing at the air much like Derek before. In an instant Stiles could see the red glow come from his friend's – his Alpha's – eyes followed by a loud, angry howl. There was determination behind it, and Stiles felt his grip on Lydia tighten and her respond in turn. Whatever they were dealing with in their complex relationship would have to be put on hold. Even if they weren't wolves, Scott's influence had pushed them into the pack whether they wanted to be or not.

"So what's the plan," Lydia asked, sniffling.

"We find who did this. Or what," Stiles answered her.

"I think I already know _who_ did it," Scott's wolfish facial hair bristled up and he extended his claws, tightening his paw into a fist.


	7. Well, That's a Shocker

The ride had been turbulent with emotion for Stiles. He masked his thoughts as focusing on driving, but that was one of the last things on his mind. Every corner of his conscious was masked in worry – worry about Scott, his dad, Lydia – everything. As usual, his focus centered on Lydia despite what he told himself earlier at the loft. He shouldn't be focusing on relationship woes when there were people's lives at stake. Then again, he reflected, wasn't Lydia's life on the line? Why shouldn't he worry about her? He'd done it for most of his natural life, especially in the last few years.

He kept glancing at the rear-view mirror, trying to catch her looking up at him. Stiles just needed a little push to keep himself going. Lydia's face still held that terror, however, and that worked just as well. Of course he was going to help Scott find this mystery pursuer and kidnapper but now more than that rested on this. If they couldn't find this thing, then Lydia might be haunted by it for God knows how long. Then he'd lose her again, and maybe permanently. That wasn't something Stiles was going to risk, not after everything that happened.

There was still that one little part, though, that teensy, tiny little 'L' word-

"Of course it has to be Peter," Scott growled, interrupting his thoughts. Stiles had to admit it was strange that the elder Hale hadn't been anywhere around here when Derek was taken and with Lydia's nightmares Stiles hadn't been too far from making the same conclusion himself, but there was some niggling doubt. Scott had told him what Derek said on the phone: Peter was missing, but he still didn't believe it was him, and if Derek of all wasn't going to throw him under the bus then there was no reason to worry. Whether he liked or not, Stiles had a strange trust for Derek. Maybe it wasn't deserved and it didn't hold completely, one-hundred percent of the time, but if Derek believed Peter had the possibility of being innocent then he wouldn't condemn the man immediately like Scott seemed to be doing.

"Scott, _why _does it have to be him? It seems like there's a new monster in this town every year, and guess what?" Stiles looked at an imaginary watch on his wrist, "It's about that time again!"

"Why do you trust him?" Lydia butted in quietly. She had been sitting in the backseat not speaking for the majority of the ride to the Hale house – where Scott believed Peter would be. Stiles didn't want to burst his bubble about how alarmingly obvious that was and yet at the same time he could feel a little spark go off in his head when he thought about the rundown construction.

Lydia's face, on the other hand, looked disgusted at the prospect. Could she really not feel that voice in her head yelling 'no' when they talked about Peter? It was a distant, faint little nobody that Stiles had to coax out to hear the whole story – that Peter wasn't the wolf or _thing _that stalked her. He could rationalize why Lydia immediately jumped to that conclusion though: this was the crazy resurrected werewolf that had been haunting her nightmares and daily life for far too long. If Stiles could give her that closure with Peter he would, but that voice came back up and reminded him that the man wasn't guilty.

"I, I don't know. Scott you have to feel that too, right? Something telling you this just doesn't add up?" Stiles wanted so badly to look at Lydia then, to show her that he wasn't crazy. He wanted to grab onto her for dear life and try and get her to understand that small voice. They would have to talk later like they silently agreed upon earlier. Relationship issues would have to be set aside for the moment. Meanwhile, Scott's response was exactly what he had hoped for.

"It _has _to be him, though. Who else has a grudge against Derek and Lydia? Or me? I mean they are _my _pack, so this has gotta be directed at me right?" Scott was clearly scrambling for straws here. He was out of his league – he didn't actually know if it was Peter, Stiles thought. He was trying to be the leader who always knew the right thing to do even when the choices were cloudy and the answer wasn't incredibly apparent.

"Why wouldn't Peter go after your mom again?" Stiles retorted. He glanced at his friend, whose face had fallen into a doubtful, contemplative grimace.

"I don't know," he blurted out, confused, "But all I know is that Peter is our best lead."

"If he's innocent, he's innocent," Stiles said calmly before looking back at Lydia and continuing, "But if he's the one creeping on Lydia and stealing wolves, give him hell Scott."

The other boy smiled, nodding, before closing his eyes and resuming what had to be some deep introspection Stiles wasn't aware of. He only hoped it wouldn't be about Allison right now, at least not for the moment. If he was worried about the girl showing up it would slow him down and make ripping out Peter's throat – there the voice just harrumphed at him – harder.

When they pulled up by the mess of a building Derek used to hide out in, Stiles was struck by a brief feeling of something being thrown over his eyes and blinding him. The air quickly rushed out of his lungs and his knees felt wobbly and weak, forcing him to lean back on the Jeep and take deep breaths in response. His throat clenched and images of Peter turning on Lydia and finishing the job he started years ago flashed in his mind, and of other horrors: one, Lydia's bloodstained body, devoid of life, being dragged away somewhere. Two, claws digging into his own gut as Lydia watches and screams into the night. The third was watching Scott die, hearing his best friend – his brother – being torn apart by the mystery wolf, flesh being peeled from his body and pained howls during the lurid torture. Even the small voice guiding him so far panicked and ran, leaving Stiles to confront the imagery himself.

What if they walked into this house and they lost it all? It's what was going to happen, right? Stiles's macabre images began to seep into the reality around him: Lydia turned and her throat was slashed, blood dripping down onto the jacket she was wearing. She didn't seem to notice the blood or that she should be dying and instead raised an eyebrow at him. Scott's back was covered in slashes and his bones were showing through, his spine sliced cleanly in half. Stiles hoped he wouldn't turn around – he didn't need to endure what horrifying mutilations were on the other side.

He had begun to dissect the first of his visions, seeing the dusted floorboards stained deep red and brown and covered with combinations of Lydia's and Derek's blood, when the nighttime breeze struck him full in the face and a small figure wove their fingers around his. And just like that the images seemed to run in reverse, pulling back to this very moment where his eyes cleared and the quiet crunch of leaves occasionally rose in the air, with Lydia's hand gripping his.

"Hey, you all right?" She asked, her voice light and fragile. He wondered why it sounded so familiar until he realized it was the way he'd ask her that – that same willingness to be vulnerable with her if she wanted it.

"Yeah, no I'm good," he answered, then swung their hands a bit and gave her a brief smile, "Yeah, I'm really good now."

Stiles was surprised to see determination in her eyes, some kind of understanding. Or maybe it wasn't even understanding, he thought. Maybe it was just trust, or maybe it was love?

* * *

They had made their way into the house quietly, with Stiles and Lydia arguing that they weren't going to leave Scott to go in alone. Scott backed down remarkably fast, apparent worry over the situation growing every second. The musty smell permeated the air but the werewolf seemed to smell something amongst the moth balls and dying vermin, stopping every few steps with a confused look on his face before sniffing at the walls or floor again.

"There's something else here. I don't recognize it," he whispered to the pair behind him. There was real worry there, "I think it's a werewolf… but I don't know."

"What? You _think _it's a wolf?" Lydia had to keep her voice low answering him, crossing her arms and irritation showing on her face.

"I said it's unfamiliar," Scott forced out quietly, "It's like a wolf's scent, but I don't know who it is. I smell Peter and Derek, though. They're definitely here, and blood. Lots of it."

If they weren't still clinging to each other, Stiles would have grabbed for her hand right then. If he didn't know all of this stuff about surrogate sacrifices then he'd have called himself pathetic for jumping to Lydia every time something went wrong. At the rate his life was crumbling down around him he'd be reaching out too damn often to be sane, he thought. The pair followed Scott, whose claws had been out in preparation and they could see his back tense up as they made their way into the den of the house where he said the smell emanated from.

Inside the room the trio could see two men lying against each other back to back, with claw marks all over their bodies and dried bloodstains surrounding them on the floor. The fireplace even had splatters of brown and red covering the dust, where some conflict had clearly taken place. In fact, the whole scene spoke of violence – the previously upturned furniture was completely destroyed at one end of the room and the age-worn flooring was pulled apart in places all across. Stiles turned to look at the two bodies – Derek's hands were covered in blood and several of his fingers looked broken, while the other man was what Stiles's little voice expected to see. It was Peter, unconscious and with a hideous gash spread across his cheek where a gigantic claw had torn through the flesh and pulled away.

The gothic atmosphere was added to with the harsh moonlight pouring in. Just like at the loft, the center of the den was bathed in white light but this time only in streaks. The Hales' blood spatters pockmarked the perfect lines, creating what looked like the direction they were dragged in from. From that distance he couldn't tell if Peter and Derek were actually breathing but before he could think about it anymore, something heavy smashed into his back. Stiles's hand couldn't maintain its grip and he flew forwards into a sofa split in two which sent him tumbling on to his back and into a collapsed chunk of wood that arched into his back.

The pain was like having someone drive a hammer into the back of his neck repeatedly, pulsing waves of irritated nerve firing off every few seconds as he struggled to maintain consciousness. Lydia had reacted instantly, dashing over to him while the sounds of a vicious, angered roar filled the air. Stiles hadn't been scared by Scott's transformation in a long time, though the bright red eyes still bothered him quite a bit, but the combination of those eyes and that rage-filled snarl didn't make him envious of this new werewolf. The crimson matched some of the stains marking the walls and floor and the fury in the howl made the other figure, the one who sent Stiles skidding across the room, shudder back a few inches before returning the Alpha's intimidation with what comparably sounded like a childish whine.

It was definitely a werewolf that much was sure. But who could it have been that held such a grudge against the entire pack like this? It garnered so much hate that it was willing to attack Scott alone, without its pack and with the threat of Isaac showing up to answer an Alpha's call. Stiles had no time to ponder this when the other figure – whom Stiles noted was far more wolf-like than Scott, with the previous human facial features all but gone – made to tackle the still fuming boy. He was too fast, however, and seemed to intercept the pounce mid-air and threw the wolf into the nearest wall. The crisp, crumbling wallpaper split easily and the force of the toss sent the attacker deep into the wall's foundation.

This time it scrambled to its feet and circled Scott, neither of them taking their eyes off the other. It was almost poetic, but then there was a bellow emanating from his friend followed by a rush towards the kidnapper. It all happened in a flash, but the next thing Stiles knew the wolf was crouching – or the closest to crouching a wolf could get – and there was a streak of blood across its chest. This was a flesh-wound from an Alpha, and he could see the pain in the thing's eyes as it looked down at the blackening fluids dropping to the floor.

With a wounded grunt, it turned and made for another suicide charge at Scott. Again he reacted too quickly, bringing his elbow down onto the creature's back, sending it crumpling face-first. Whoever it was, it wasn't an Alpha. The thing was no match for an extremely pissed off, roided-out Scott and seemed to give up after the second attack. It lay there, breathing heavily in a cloud of dust and decay mixed with the fumes of freshly spilled and old blood.

After a few seconds of standing over the crumpled form, panting breaths slowing down, the overgrown canines retreated and Stiles was looking at the regular old human Scott again. He turned to Stiles, scanning him for any obvious damage.

"Go check on those two," Stiles protested to him, already feeling like he was almost good to walk, and pointing at the two figures still left hopefully unconscious. Halfway over to the two of them the broken mass lying on the floor moved suddenly, shifting its gaze around wildly as if it were confused. The golden eyes scanned the room before stopping at Lydia. The wolf glanced at Stiles and then growled shortly, baring its fangs at the pair but quickly stopping to leap towards an exit and out into the woods.

Scott seemed to consider chasing after the thing before turning back around to his friends. Stiles shook his head and Lydia furrowed her brow in confusion, and he hoped Scott would take the current situation – two possible deaths – over the mystery wolf. He nodded, checking the two men's breathing before letting out a relieved sigh.

"Yeah, they're alive," he answered the question thick in the air that no one wanted to ask.

"Of course we're alive, dumbass," Peter groaned in response. Scott jumped back as the older man cracked his neck and stood up, brushing off the bits of clothing that had been ripped off, picking at his mangled jacket in dismay, "They always have to ruin the coat. Since when did werewolves hate tailors so much?"

Lydia visibly shuddered at the image of Peter rising up, unscathed, and Stiles pulled her closer to him with whatever strength was in his arms. The warmth of her body against his both dispelled the natural chill in the night air and the uneasy tension from the fight just moments ago. Still feeling her shiver a little, Stiles hoped what he was feeling earlier wasn't being transferred over to Lydia right now through whatever it was that made her disappear into herself before. He had to talk to Deaton about that, he thought. He didn't want to ever spread this blackness, this disease, to her again. He'd already been through hell once, and if he could control it like Deaton claimed to then Stiles would figure it out.

"Took you long enough," Derek complained. His wounds seemed to be healing slower than Peter's.

"What, you didn't like the little family get-together?" Peter inquired, chuckling, "It was lovely until we had our little uninvited guest, don't you think?"

His question was directed at Derek, who grimaced and stared blankly at him causing Peter to raise his hands in mock forgiveness. Stiles wanted to laugh, but with Lydia still terrified by the Hales the sound never came out. Instead he kept trying to piece together who the intruder could have been and how he knew to find both of them. All the while Scott seemed to be concentrating on some thought and kept looking around the room and sniffing at the air, apparently gathering whatever evidence his senses could.

"It's an Omega," he declared, "There's no way it's an Alpha, and if he lives out here then his pack would have come to help him at the first call. So, no pack and no Alpha means he's alone."

"Good call, Scott. I'm impressed," Peter looked genuinely surprised by the conclusion.

"Do we know any Omegas?" Stiles had managed to get to his feet with Lydia's support, wondering why they hadn't heard of this loner before. Or maybe-

"No, but remember what Deaton said? This must be the start of whatever… whatever," Scott stumbled.

"It's the start of some supernatural influx. It's just the beginning." Lydia offered. The three werewolves in front of the pair nodded gravely, lending an austere weight to her words. If this was only the start of things, Stiles thought, what the _hell _was up next? They'd already dealt with a pack of Alphas, so why was an Omega the catalyst for it all?

* * *

This time Lydia drove and Stiles sat passenger after he nudged knowingly in Peter's direction when his friend went to sit. If she wasn't already a wreck, leaving him in the back with Peter wasn't going to help matters one bit. He was right there, but Lydia still didn't trust Peter fully despite having confirmation that he wasn't the stalker. Stiles couldn't bring himself to confront her about it yet. It was too irrational to be going on this long and they both knew it, but there would be a time and place later. It would probably be much later, judging by their miniscule progress so far.

The animated conversation from before was gone, replaced by an awkward and heavy silence.

"Well, if no one's going to speak up," Peter exclaimed, raising a hand and looking around, "I think I'll get us started then? It's not me. That's obvious."

Stiles grit his teeth and saw Scott and Derek nod begrudgingly, looking a little guilty and disappointed at the same time. It would have been far too easy if it was Peter, he thought. Nothing was ever that easy for them, was it?

"So, it's an Omega that we don't know. It's angry at Scott, but didn't go after his mother for whatever reason," he continued, "And it's got a strange obsession with our little friend over here. Which isn't surprising – it seems like everyone in this little group's gone after her at some point. It's only just now that we have a winner."

"Hey!" Derek and Scott said simultaneously. The two looked at each other before shrugging and dropping the topic altogether. After this it seemed like no one wanted to continue Peter's inquisition anymore. They all felt uneasy about the possibilities, especially Stiles. A werewolf, a lone wolf, who was angry at Scott and was Lydia's lapdog? There was always the obvious choice and the thought made him want to vomit – he was supposed to be in London. Then again, he thought, maybe the Nemeton had drawn him back to the town. Maybe the Omega _was_ just the beginning of it all, like they said earlier? There was a sort of irony there that the Omega would be the firestarter for this whole parade of supernatural crazy.

"Well that only leaves one person, right?" Lydia spoke up, her voice clear and sounding sure of herself. Stiles felt a bit of pride that she was trying to overcome her fear and intimidation this quickly, just like the Lydia he knew – just like the real Lydia – would. She had a conflicted grimace on her face, and Stiles unfortunately knew exactly what it was about. Trying to maintain a straight face, she continued, "It's Jackson, isn't it?"

* * *

**A/N: **Well then, this took a turn! This is the part where the relationship aspect takes a different angle in the story. No, it's not going away - it's obvious in this chapter how important the Stiles/Lydia relationship is to the story - but it needs some development that this is bound to bring.

As always, be the bestest ever and drop a review. It's cool if you don't, but it's the *coolest* if you do. By the way, I'm totally not Jeff Davis. Dunno, I might be but I haven't checked in a while. I also don't think I have any official connection to TW.


	8. Facehuggers Are Surprisingly Romantic

**A/N: **Why do I do this to myself? I set a schedule and then decide, "Fuck it, let's write this thing!"

All right, so warning's a warning - this is the very closest to smut I'll likely ever get. Whether you're into it or not I'm just not into writing it, but the more intense moments in here just flowed from everything prior. Also, this scene is more an aside than anything. After that crazy night these kids need a little relaxation, right? Well, there's nothing more relaxing than awkward conversations with parents. Oh, wait.

Anyways, review please. I love them so much, and they're my motivation to keep writing. Knowing that you guys like the story, or even if you don't, is how I get the inspirations to do this! No affiliation, blah, blah, blah.

Oh, by the way this isn't the end. Far from it, way way far from it.

* * *

Moments ago they had been driving everyone off to their homes, Scott last. Stiles had to force the boy into his house, where there seemed to be some quiet discussion going on in the living room between his parents. Lydia couldn't see much other than Stiles awkwardly wave his way out of the situation before bolting back into the Jeep, touching his side gingerly when he sat back down in the passenger seat.

"Sure you're good?" Lydia asked.

"Yeah, it's just a flesh wound," he answered, grunting as he cracked his back against the seat. If she hadn't seen his reference coming a mile away and _tsk_'d at it, then Lydia would have focused on the way his body arched against the rough seats of the car, the way he seemed to relax back into it with a look of combined elation and victory after an audible _snap_. Instead she focused on driving.

Neither of them talked much on the way back to Stiles's place. Neither of them really decided that's where they were going, but Lydia felt compelled to go there and finish what they had intended on in the first place. They were going to enjoy their time together and they had plans already. When they had passed Lydia's house, Stiles didn't object. There was probably some silly, chauvinistic power fantasy rumbling in his head about how he had to protect her but she didn't mind it. The idea behind it wasn't damaging, she considered. Stiles saw himself as responsible for her, and she reciprocated. Whether he knew it or not, it didn't matter – in time he would come to terms with it. Hopefully he already had, judging by the way he seemed to change over the weeks before Jackson's return.

There were conversations they would have – actual conversations – that felt like she was _arguing _with Stiles, and not in the usual 'I'm going and that's final' or 'you don't have to protect me' ways. They would have discussions, they would talk about how they felt on a subject and when they disagreed they would have it out. Never a friendship-shattering one, but their arguments could get heated. And then, just like that, Stiles would make a joke and Lydia couldn't help herself but to laugh at the awful punchline, they'd finish the homework at hand and life would go on.

"Do you think there's a normal for us?" She decided to bring up before pulling into the concrete driveway.

"Like, go on a date and not get attacked by a werewolf ex-boyfriend of yours? Which, I might add, is seeming to be a trend in your lovelife," He tacked on, raising a finger as if it were some grand proclamation, "I kinda doubt it."

Now they were in the dining room of the Stilinski house, both of them pretending to be embarrassed teenagers who had been late to dinner because of "reasons." Oh how she wished that was the excuse for not having an enjoyable night with her… whatever Stiles was categorized as and his strangely warm father and not the truth: cavorting with werewolves, as usual, and trying to rationalize what the hell they should do about the newcomer. At least Stiles could chalk up his back to the aforementioned reasons, but Lydia was still shaken at the prospect of Jackson being back in town. Covering that burden up wasn't as easy as giving her dad a wink and nodding towards the pretty girl across the table. Under normal circumstances, getting Stiles to blush a little and laugh softly at his dad's approving looks would have been worth it. Now, she just smiled half-heartedly at the two of them as they continued their mundane chat.

Was Jackson only back because of the energy manipulated by the Nemeton, or was there something more to him coming out-of-the-blue back to Beacon Hills? Lydia wanted to think about this and more when Stiles excused himself, leaving her alone with the elder Stilinski. Previously he had been jovial with her, going with her jokes, and his playful remarks to Stiles had made her grin stupidly without thinking. Now he seemed different, his face stern as if he removed one persona and replaced it with another – the worried father.

"So, Lydia." He clapped his hands together and gave her a full ear-to-ear smile, the wrinkles on his face bunching up in dimples that she found strangely attractive. Somewhere in the back of her mind she hoped Stiles aged like that before silently filing that away in the 'crazy thoughts' folder and hoping to never think that far in advance again.

"Yes?" She answered, straightening her back out and matching his stare.

"Look, I don't want to be that guy – I really don't – but I have to ask: why?" His question was dense, it was an accusation. She could feel the weight of it come from the way his eyes squinted and his lips curled into an inquisitive smirk, and it bothered her. It bothered her that this was the status she had created for herself in this town, that a man she just assumed would welcome her along with Stiles would interrogate her like this. But that always was another one of her problems, assuming. Assuming the best for herself when she, sometimes, didn't deserve it. Sadly this was one of those situations.

"I don't think I have to explain myself. I like your son, he likes me back and that's the end of it." There, simple logic. He couldn't argue with that could he?

"Yeah, I get that part… and I get that you two got, well closer over the past month – God knows Stiles isn't in his room 24/7 because of you, to which I'm grateful." He raised his glass to her and then continued, swirling the ice around in the cool liquid, "But he's talked about you for _years_, Lydia. He's talked to me about you for so long that most the time I just assume you're dating."

"So you're going to ask why now of all times, right?" She tilted her head expectantly and, at the nod from the man across the table, she continued with a fervor growing in each syllable, "I've learned more about Stiles in the past month than I ever knew about him in ten years. He's been strong for everyone – for Scott, for you, for me – and he doesn't know when to quit. He never shuts up, but half the time I'm happy he just keeps babbling on about whatever he feels like… he's a real person. I've never had that, you know? I've never had someone care about me instead of _acting _like they care about me to get in my pants. At least, not in the way Stiles cares."

Lydia had to stop herself before she went off the deep end with this conversation. The big 'L' was looming horrendously over her thoughts, threatening to spill out in the next sentence before she could begin to prepare for the ramifications. During her whole spiel, the wrinkles on the man's face would contract and shape around his facial gesticulations much in the same way Stiles did. He was considering what to think of her little speech and whether it was the truth or just incoherent ramblings of a girl grasping at straws.

"All right, all right. I'm sorry for that, it's just – it's funny, actually. Normally it'd be your dad saying this stuff to my kid, but I don't think I can see him hurt again, not after his mother y'know?" The sheriff's words were softer now but he was just as sincere and forceful, not letting Lydia lose track of his point – Stiles may act strong, he might even be a strong person, but Lydia could make that crumble into so many insignificant pebbles at the drop of a hat. She knew it, and it's why she still hadn't said that stupid, irritating word to him yet. If she backed out after that, if she pulled the usual Lydia 'escape from it all,' then he would be left in the wreckage.

"Yeah, I get it. I don't want to – I know it doesn't mean anything to you, me saying it, but I don't want to hurt him," she said to him quietly, getting a slow pensive nod in return. Lydia poked at the food still left on her plate for a while, stopping every so often to smile at the sheriff before Stiles returned.

He returned beaming at Lydia, who returned it gladly. It didn't take long for Lydia to be ensconced in their hyperspeed change of topics, every so often one of them going back to pick at their food or their drinks absentmindedly. It was exhilarating, having the two of them so interested in what she had to say – laughing at anecdotes, asking questions, and really _listening_. All thoughts of Jackson's return had escaped her mind as they were knee-deep in an argument about why _Aliens _was just as good as the original _Alien_. Or, rather, Stiles was in that argument with his dad.

"You can't argue with the structure of _Alien_! It's the classic slasher, dad!" Stiles seemed completely caught off-guard that his father would say something as crazy as this, even feigning indignation at his claim, "You've got the beginning with all this complacency, then – _bam! _ – we're hit with that first facehugger!"

"It's too slow, who needs all that crap in the first half-hour? What about the nest scene?" He picked up the leftover potato-skin on his plate, apparently forgetting he had company and unceremoniously shoved it in his mouth before finishing through the food, "It's so good!"

This, this Lydia loved and she would say that every day of the week. Seeing Stiles so comfortable in his own skin around her, like she just belonged there was good enough for her. That inescapable wall she had built up around her now felt like a brief parapet down into the Stilinski house. Lost in her thought and feeling the corners of her mouth turn up unconsciously, she didn't notice when they turned to her.

"Hmm?" She muttered dumbly.

"What'd you think, Lydia? Cameron or Scott?" Sheriff Stilinski was staring her down, as if this question were the most important thing in the world. Life or death; Cameron or Scott, whatever that meant.

"I haven't seen either of them, to be honest," she admitted.

Judging by their reactions this was about the worst thing she could have said. Stiles's mouth dropped so low she swore her top had fallen off and the chewing of potato-skin from the other side of the dining room stopped altogether. An awkward silence covered the scene until she shrugged noncommittally and tried to put on her best 'forgive me' face. Neither of them seemed to be buying it.

"You, you what now?" Stiles stretched his neck out, veins jutting, and pushing away from the table leaving Lydia nearly oblivious of the situation at all if not for him wildly falling into the back of his chair and covering his face with his hands, "You've _got _to be kidding me!"

Was it really such a travesty that she hadn't seen some science fiction flicks from the 70's and 80's? Apparently there was nothing worse because, in the blink of an eye, there was the smell of popcorn and chocolate in the air as she sat on an old sofa in front of a television. Stiles's dad was sitting in a chair just offset from the couch and Stiles sat next to her on the couch. The innocuous ambient sounds provided ample background for the overly long title card, but not enough to cover the sheriff's excited speech.

"Listen, you don't get to date my son without having seen _Aliens. _No way, just ain't happening," he threw his hands about energetically in much the same way Stiles did every day.

Lydia had already liked him before, but this was a different side that she never saw. It was so amusing she just let the part about considering her and Stiles dating fall aside and mix with the sounds of computers coming to life on the screen in front of her.

"I don't think I could handle it, either. This movie is the best, well except for maybe _The Empire Strikes Back_," Stiles added, pushing himself up next to Lydia and propping his feet up on the coffee table.

"Now that, that we can agree on," the other man said through a mouthful of popcorn, to which Lydia couldn't help but giggle. She masked it as a cough before snuggling into Stiles, relishing the feeling of her curves molding with his lanky frame without hesitation from either side. Her hand had threaded itself into his and their hands, the way they shared the cushion of the couch, it all felt normal. So much so that she couldn't help herself when she pressed a light kiss to Stiles's cheek and when he returned it with a playful shove of his body, much to the amusement of Mr. Stilinski. This normal Lydia could get used to, this feeling of all-encompassing ease and complacency.

By the time the infirmary scene had rolled around Lydia was absorbed in the characters, especially the way Ripley seemed to be the silent badass archetype usually reserved for a man and her interactions with the captain. There was an equality in the way they spoke, and Lydia had to remind herself this movie was made in 1979. It amazed her that something like this hadn't been in history books or civil rights pamphlets she'd pored over – this was real culture, real Americans putting women in the principal lead.

When the squiggly creepy-crawly exploded into the scene Lydia forgot all about cultural impact and social reform. She shuddered and jerked back into Stiles, who was laughing the instant she jumped. The feeling of his body stifling laughter made her laugh along with him eventually.

"Man, that still looks awesome," Stiles's dad exclaimed at the same moment Stiles laughed.

He was so consumed by the movie, and Lydia would have been too if she didn't feel Stiles press her harder to him and turn her face towards his.

"How romantic," she whispered before feeling the warmth of his mouth come into contact with hers. She hadn't really properly kissed Stiles, and so when she felt him respond eagerly to her tongue it sent vibrations throughout her body. Lydia dared to graze her teeth across his lip and would have continued pushing further if there wasn't a brief cough from the chair that made the two of them detach and laugh quietly.

"Hey lovebirds, quit it. I'm trying to watch people get picked off one by one here." Lydia swore there was a chuckle hiding at the end of his sentence, but if there was the sheriff was too good and never let it slip. Stiles definitely did, and his brief fit of laughter sent her into giggles that didn't end until the claustrophobic tunnel scene where Lydia became re-immersed in the fiction playing out before her. This whole atmosphere was definitely real, and holy shit did it feel good to be a part of it.

The ending of the movie was perfect. Except for the cheap rubber suit, that was hilarious. Luckily they all shared that opinion and Lydia could barely keep herself contained when the second film came rolling in, and by the mid-point of the film Stiles's dad was mostly silent except for brief snores. This one she wasn't quite as fond of – while Ripley was still an amazing feminine hero and this new android Bishop was good too, the supporting crew was a generic rag-tag group of nobodies that, for the most part, died in the 'nest scene' they had been arguing about earlier.

Again the ending was great, or at least the parts Lydia could remember. Snores were still drifting from the chair beside them and she was becoming increasingly interested in the bit of skin connecting Stiles's shoulder to his neck. The way he reacted to her lips on his skin was amazing in itself – shuddering and making groaning sounds she would have loved to conduct all night – and when she left small trails with her teeth down and across his neck he made a sound so inarticulate all she could relate it to was a babbling river.

At that they broke apart, Stiles eying his father's sleeping form carefully and Lydia entirely aware that this was creating a rather uncomfortable situation for him. Even so, she didn't want anything more than to continue their little expeditions upstairs. Where, hopefully, the walls were a bit thicker, or at least the sheriff wouldn't be so perturbed that they were going at each other right beside him.

"Okay, hey…" Stiles blabbered when they reached his door, his body shaking all over.

"Hey," she whispered into his neck as he fumbled with the doorknob.

"We should, ah, yeah shouldn't I go get… well, eh." His hands were moving all over her body, unsure and not steady. Despite every part of her wanting to laugh at Stiles's inability to make a decision about where he should put them, it was an amazing feeling by itself. He was, however, more prepared than she gave him credit for and before her chemical-addled brain could muster anything witty he had already dug a condom out of his drawer.

"Stilinski, you don't think I'm that kind of girl, do you?" she breathed, folding her legs around his after pushing him onto the bed.

"Uhh, not gonna lie – I'm not really thinking at this point," Stiles said flatly.

It was sweet. This was sweet. Everything about Stiles was sweet, and now his hands were surer. His kisses were focused and now he was just a bit more than sweet. There were brief brushes, small instant frictions that sent her mind racing and her heart beating at least twice as fast. Then it hit her, like the freight train it was. Lydias stopped his hands and could see hurt on his face, or disappointment in that she had stopped him when her shirt was part-ways off, but gave him a reassuring nudge before looking into his eyes and hoped she gave off the conviction she felt.

"I know I'm gonna regret this later – no, not that," she interjected when he started to move his hips backwards and away from her, "But… fuck Stiles, I love you."

There. It was out there. _Bang_ and done. Three easy words, right? Right of course, because there weren't serious ramifications for the two of them if this all went south. His expression changed from brutish anticipation to realization quickly, and soon he was kissing her again. And again, and again. His body had traded with hers and she was lying beneath him, his eyes bright and face still turned in a smile.

"I feel like I should say it too, but it's kinda outplayed by now I think."

Oh boy, he was clearly skirting this. When her eyebrows lowered threateningly and her smile faded, he shook his head and closed his eyes for a second.

"Sorry, dumb," he sighed.

"Yeah, pretty much." She hadn't meant to sound so indignant. Lydia really didn't want this to end right here.

"All right then, I love you too," he said with a careless grace. Not that same way Jackson would append his sentences or other boys would grunt out during sex. This was fundamentally different – she figured he felt so comfortable living in the words already that this moment was just cementing them. The whole night, every arc they had traveled along, was just an obstacle in the path of that seemingly impossible word that radiated throughout Lydia's thoughts.

Lydia didn't think about Jackson at all for the rest of the night, she only thought of, and enjoyed, Stiles.


	9. Question Everything

The first thing Stiles felt when he woke up was the pressure on his back from the previous night's myriad adventures. For the first few seconds his breathing was constrained, pressure leaking inwards on his lungs before eventually leaving him space to inhale. The pain and claustrophobic sense of caving in from the inside was alleviated by the small, pale hand draped over him. Lydia was still covered by his blankets but he could still picture everything vividly – the way her hips locked in with his, the way her breasts shifted and bounced slightly, everything. Even if he could vaguely remember seeing her naked when she had her little nighttime excursion months ago, it wasn't the same. What he'd imagined wasn't nearly as fun as what he'd _done_.

Still, whatever strange, more creative fantasies he'd dreamt up were probably way out of his grasp at this point in their relationship, but Stiles was still pretty content with the basic sex that happened the night before. Because, well, he got to say he had sex with Lydia. If there was anything to go on his bucket list, that was pretty damn near the top. It didn't matter much how quick he'd been. On one hand he was embarrassed for himself at how stupid he had been assuming it was going to be anything more than a brief rustle of friction and on the other Stiles wanted to find Scott and brag. For hours if he let him, since minutes weren't even in his libido's concept.

Then there was the word he'd been dreading to say, and she went ahead and said it anyways. Of course Lydia would have been the one to take the first step there, because there wasn't any way Stiles would get anywhere near scaring her off. Even after everything they had been through, and now the looming reality of Jackson's return, he was worrying about something like teenage 'love.' But when he said it to her there wasn't any hesitation, there wasn't any doubt behind the words. If there was anything Stiles was good at, it was being pretty damn sure about his emotions.

There was a barely audible murmur from the girl next to him. At least she didn't run away afterwards, he thought. That was the best case scenario at this point and he was going to roll with the punches on this one. So he took his next cue, leaned down and pressed a light kiss to her forehead before sighing his content. They kept their position in the bed for a few minutes more before the reddish hair moved and the girl woke up, the mist of sleep and ecstasy in her eyes still mingling. Stiles only had one thought:

_Yeah, I did that. Me: Stiles. _

"A little tired, are we?" If she didn't have a rebuttal for his smug bastard of a grin, then he'd be disappointed in her. Or a little proud.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Lydia retorted, stifling a yawn halfway through the sentence.

That was more like it, but like hell if he was finished there.

"I don't recall a whole lot," he said.

"Must not have been anything eventful, then." She smiled at him, resting her chin on his shoulder and silently waiting the comeback.

"I remember watching _Alien _and then…" He raised his left hand in a vague motion, "Well, _I'm_ pleased with myself."

In response she perked up visibly, and Stiles was primed for another go when she started talking about the movie instead. If he had lied the night prior, then watching Lydia maintain her grip on the covers – she apparently had more dignity than Stiles, who was fine with briefs over the covers – and fire questions at him in rapid succession about one of his favorite movies would have done it. She was so animated, even propping herself up at one point to get a good angle to loudly agree with him about the ending, it made him never want to get out of bed.

"I really love you," he mumbled out of the blue, watching her gesticulate her points about why Ridley Scott was an amazing director and how progressive the film was. His outburst made her stop and roll her eyes, but he could see the blush in her cheeks rising and her lips curl into a genuine smile.

"You don't have to keep saying it, sweetheart," She said.

It didn't matter how often he 'had' to say it, whatever that meant. Any opportunity he would be given, Stiles decided he'd just say it. End of a brief conversation? Yep. Talk for a second in the school hallways, right before, during, and after sex? Definitely. Did he care that made him sound like a little kid infatuated with someone? Not at all.

But there was still one thing bothering him about the whole 'love' situation.

"Are we gonna, y'know, talk about Jackson?" Stiles could feel his face scrunch into a sour expression at the mention of him. Lydia's face didn't seem to fare much better at the sound of his name either, which he should have counted as some small victory.

"I guess," she acquiesced, "What about him?"

"I mean, you guys were pretty… uhm, pretty serious." His words sounded even dumber out loud than they did when they first popped into his head.

"It's almost been a year, Stiles. If he cared about me, he'd have at least called me. Once," she returned. That surprised him. It wasn't exactly like Jackson was totally ambivalent of his situation with Lydia. Stiles was painfully aware of that.

"Really? What a-"

"Yeah, pretty much," she finished for him, "I loved him, I'm pretty sure."

It sounded strange to Stiles. How could you love someone and then just… stop? Maybe he was still too naïve to make sense of that, so he asked her. She laughed an open, throaty laugh that would have normally left him embarrassed to speak with her.

"That's not how it works, sweetheart. It's different – I _loved _Jackson. Past tense. That was before he skipped town," she said, "And now we've got to deal with this; this tether stuff right? This seems to be working so far."

He figured it made sense. Well, as much sense as he was going make without prodding any further about it. There wasn't a chance in hell Stiles was going to accidentally steer her into rediscovering feelings for her ex. Even if he had, you know, attacked Stiles and two other people they remotely trusted. She'd gone back to him after he had been a homicidal lizard, so Stiles didn't want to try and see where she drew the line.

Despite the overwhelming calm of lying in bed with Lydia, they both decided it was probably a good idea to go to school that day. Getting Scott worried about them might have only caused more problems than this was worth, even when Lydia gently nudged at his side with her bare feet and shot him a playful look. He might even try and find Jackson on his own which, despite the little showdown at the Hale house, was a bad plan even for him.

Besides, Stiles hoped Jackson was at school. He just wanted to see the look on his dumb, chiseled face when the two of them showed up.

* * *

It was another great drive to school. Even if Stiles should have been worried about two werewolves being severely pissed off at him over his passenger, it was a good day and he wasn't going to let that go. He didn't even feel the threat of the weight that had been hanging over him. Everything in his mind was sunshine, great friends, and an even better girlfriend. Yep, he was going to use that word now. Why not? It made Stiles feel infinitely better about himself, even though somewhere deep down that was almost depressing that he was just now really happy, so he was going to say it. Over and over again, in every way possible. He repeated just a few of the scenarios he would gleefully inject it into an otherwise fine sentence:

"S_orry, I was just at my girlfriend's place."_

_ "Yeah, my girlfriend and I…"_

_ "It's a negative externality, coach. Oh and did you know, I'm dating Lydia Martin?"_

Yeah, those sounded good. It was even better because Lydia seemed just as happy as he felt. They didn't break off into awkward silence on their way and there weren't any agitated _tsk's_ directed his way. At least, none that was anything more than a tease. Was this their normal? Was it possible that maybe, just maybe for once, this is where the story ended? Happy endings for everyone. Literally, preferably.

While he was replaying the previous night in his head, Stiles noticed Lydia was thinking carefully and looking out to the suburban landscape on the lead-up to the school parking lot. Even if _he _was feeling pretty damn good, and despite that morning, maybe she wasn't?

"Hey, you good?" He asked, flicking his eyes back and forth between the road and her.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Just wondering how to break it to Jackson," she answered quickly.

Stiles had a pretty good plan in mind himself – walk up to the big bad, scary werewolf with his arm hooked around Lydia. Proceed to watch his face turn up into some grotesque mess, give her a quick kiss on the cheek, and then go off to class. It'd be great fun leaving him in the dust like that, just like Stiles felt like was happening to him for years. At the same time it would have been great just standing there as well, donning the biggest most shit-eating grin he could conjure up for Jackson. It'd be grand.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a greeting party for them when he parked. No absurd sports car driving up beside him, overpriced name-brand jacket and shitty hair popping out of the window to greet Lydia. Even Aiden seemed to be skulking away from them, apparently too disgruntled about the fact that she would pick the Stilinski kid over him. While Stiles was hyperaware of the werewolf exes, Scott seemed just as wary of something as well. His friend was scanning every classroom door, every single exit, and lingered over the cafeteria before he noticed the couple.

Stiles broke away from her just for a moment to let Scott in on his nightly activities. Even if he pretended to be uninterested, and Stiles unwilling to share what had happened, it still ended with Scott giving him another 'awesome' and a big grin. They parted to head for class and to stay on the lookout for Jackson in case he decided to pop up in the day, or if he decided to sneak around the school and watch _them _from afar now.

But he didn't show his face and neither of the boys nor Lydia had seen anyone pretending to be walking past a window or anything equally suspicious. Jackson had mysteriously shown up for a one-night brawl and then left them confused, questioning whether it was him at all. It wasn't like Scott could do anything in the middle of class even if the guy did show up. Wolfing out in the middle of the day had never been his style, so even if the Omega showed his face then there wasn't any way to confront him.

The day passed without incident or sighting of Jackson. Isaac was pissed he missed the fight and Allison just seemed interested in what they would do about him stalking Lydia. That was one thing Stiles hadn't really thought about. It's not like she could stay at his house forever, or that he would be over at hers all the time…

"Why don't we split it up? I'll take a few days out of the week at your place, and you get weekends at mine!" Stiles was far too excited when he brought the idea up. The ending bell rang out and people were filing out of the school en masse, and Stiles was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of leaving Lydia alone to get creeped on by Jackson again, or worse.

The sun was beating down on them as they approached the parking lot, eliciting an obnoxious sweat on Stiles and causing his back to tighten up further. He took a deep breath and straightened himself out while trying to focus on what Lydia was saying.

"As great as that sounds," she answered with a brief lick of her lips that made the tension in Stiles's back dissipate for a moment, "I think I'll be fine."

And right when Lydia said it, Stiles saw him. Sitting up against his Jeep, sunglasses and that same spiky hair, was the bailer extraordinaire himself – Jackson. She didn't catch it for a few seconds and when she did, Stiles felt her stiffen noticeably. His previous plan of swinging an arm around her would have to pass for simple hand-holding. That strangely great feeling of just holding her hand was still there and Stiles could feel the girl relax and continue to the old car.

The figure resting against the vehicle lowered his shades and shot the pair an incredulous look. His lips folded into a hostile smile that was obviously preceding some attempt at humor. Or he'd try and ruin the day for Stiles, which to be fair he was getting damn close to just by being around him.

"Really, Lydia? Jesus, how desperate _are_ you?" He laughed openly in between questions, though the malice in his eyes from the previous night was no longer there. He seemed almost genial and friendly, or at least less like he wanted to tear Stiles in half. That was an improvement. In fact, he smiled at Lydia. He had the nerve to pretend like nothing had happened and Stiles instinctively felt himself step forward.

"What do you want, Jackson?" Lydia got out before Stiles could say or do anything. Jackson's response was holding a hand over his chest, his face showing faux-anguish at her words.

"I'm hurt, really. I'll leave you and… your new friend alone," he finished, eying the taller boy as he walked off. Lydia was still visibly bothered by his presence and Stiles felt himself turn around and confront him before any rational though kicked in.

"What, you think you can just… show up and be all cool guy now? Just pretend you didn't hulk out on us last night?"

There was no walking in circles on this topic. He didn't need Jackson thinking that being here didn't make his blood boil over and that they were just going to forget what he had tried. The thought that he was just casually walking around the school, around Scott and Lydia, after his actions made Stiles's stomach curl uncomfortably.

"What are you talking about, Stilinski?" His voice sounded sincerely confused and even though he doubted himself for a moment before continuing, Stiles managed to keep his voice steady and strong.

"Come on, you came at Scott and almost broke my back," he said through gritted teeth, feeling the pressure in his back increase. He squeezed Lydia's hand, perhaps too hard, to regain composure before waiting for his response.

All he did was shrug.

"I don't care what you three do to each other, I don't want any." He spun back around and walked off, ignoring Stiles's further questions and shouts as he waved back to the two of them.

Of course he would deny it, there was no reason to own up to it, but the way he said it was familiar. It was the same way he denied ever really being aware of acting out as the kanema – as if he really believed what he said. He looked back to Lydia to see her deep in thought, lips pouty and eyes unfocused.

Again his lower back jolted him forward. Stiles had to let go of Lydia for a second to catch his breath, a blitz on his nerve endings happening while she pondered whatever was bouncing around in her head. When she reacted to his first grunt the seizing feeling lessened until it disappeared entirely, leaving him panting trying to get oxygen through his system without spine-splitting pain.

"Woah, are you sure you're okay?" She asked eyes wide.

Earlier in the day in Physics he had felt the same intense pain when the substitute picked their partners for the lab. Ever since the first day that Stiles snubbed him there had been a slight grudge between the two, mostly unrequited. At least it was until he decided to split he and Lydia up with someone Stiles thought was named Brittany and possibly the most bland guy since Greenberg. It might have been Greenberg, Stiles didn't really take notice of him because his back was bothering him the whole class period.

"Yeah, yeah. Blade over there must have done worse than I thought," he said, squirming his torso in circles in an attempt to get some sort of release from his back.

"You might want to stop doing that," Lydia remarked with a raised eyebrow, "If you ever plan on having sex with me again."

He stopped mid-turn looking like a mix of a 90's fitness instructor and a retailer's inflatable outdoor advertisement, hands splayed and contorted in an awkward half-twist. Stiles slowly moved back to his standing position and heard his back give a loud _crack _before the pain evaporated entirely.

Maybe he should get that checked, his back and the newcomer. Stiles texted Scott about their encounter with Jackson, who told them he would meet up at the clinic. If anyone knew what to make of Jackson's selective memory, it would be Deaton. Hopefully.

* * *

There were no more sudden spurts of pain in his back by the time they reached the clinic. There wasn't much for either of them to say either. Their relationship had to take a backseat to this, once again. Scott was already there, looking impatiently around when the two of them entered the operating room.

"So he really didn't remember it?" He sounded skeptical, which to be fair Stiles still was. Even if he had heard that in his voice there was no good that would come from just ignoring the fact that Jackson was apparently sleep-wolfing his way through town.

"I think, man. I don't know, all I know is that he sounded like he really had no idea what the hell we were saying," Stiles answered, rubbing absentmindedly at his side.

Scott glanced down, then looked to Lydia who lowered her eyes.

"You're sure your backs okay, dude? I mean, Deaton could look at it…" He offered.

"Nah, it's just… ugh, I think I need a good night's sleep," Stiles deflected.

Though the distinct pinpricks were gone, it was still uncomfortable rotating his torso or moving his hips at all. His friend just nodded and gave him a quick smile before giving him a brief pat on the shoulder. Brief and painfully forceful on his lower back. It made Stiles tighten up his upper body just to get past the brief jet of fire running up his back and into his skull again.

"That's what I thought."

Together the three of them sat in the cold room, chatting about the next string of tests and other things that would soon be thrown to the side when Deaton entered the room. The bleak lighting in the space left an uncomfortable feeling over top of the otherwise menial conversation, as if they were discussing something life or death. Like a math quiz or their nightly reading, or a rogue, amnesiac werewolf. There was that too.

Deaton seemed conflicted when he interrupted their conversation, his eyebrows tightly knit and worry lines jutting out. He seemed to slowly slide into his usual self before long, however. They went over what had happened in the parking lot with Jackson and the vet nodded knowingly along with them. By the time they had finished he was scratching at his facial hair, pensive and looking about as ready to speak as a rock.

"So, what's the deal?" Scott butted in.

"The deal? Honestly, I don't know," Deaton said, "He could just be lying… but you two don't seem to believe that. He could just be blacking out like he did with the kanema, as well."

Yeah, and that was a swell time Stiles thought to himself. He didn't need to gum up the works with any sarcastic comments for once. He was just worried whether or not Lydia was safe now and voiced his concern.

"Stiles, you remember what I said before?" To which Stiles nodded, "Good. Now let me contradict myself for a moment – don't overdo it. Don't take everything at lightspeed."

"Not cryptic at all," he rebuffed.

"It's a relationship, not a game. You don't need to be testing how fast you can go. Take it slow," he said looking at Lydia sharply before turning back to Stiles, "But I don't know about Lydia. I can't know if Jackson will keep coming after her. Anyways, how do you know it's Jackson."

"His smell," Scott and Lydia said in unison. Stiles had to blink away that thought as quickly as possible lest he dwell on the fact that he and Jackson had both…

"It's his smell, it still has that… stink of the kanema on him," Scott finished.

Stiles had never smelled anything like that. Then again, he wasn't a hypersensitive werewolf or a surprisingly affectionate girlfriend with a penchant for connecting collations. Deaton shrugged, shaking his head.

"My best guess is that he's still fixated on Lydia subconsciously and his tendency to return to his current mate is still there…" he trailed off, a puzzled tone in his voice.

"I'm not his current _mate_. I'm not anyone's mate," Lydia interjected, "If I'm _mating_ with anyone it's this idiot."

She jerked her head towards Stiles, who could feel his mouth turn up into another foolish grin and his cheeks burn a little hotter than before. Yeah, that's right. _They _were the ones _mating_. That word stuck around in his head and he regretted even thinking it – everything about it, the syllables to the connotation just oozed creepy.

"That's the point, I think," Scott murmured, to which Deaton perked up and nodded slowly.

"Exactly, Scott. If we're working on the assumption that the Nemeton sent out a signal to Jackson, and he's returned, there's going to be a subliminal reason his body will try and tell him. He thinks he's coming back for you, Lydia." Deaton sounded like he was getting only a marginal bit closer to this point,

"His body's tricking him into thinking that's what he's here for, but he's fighting it. Just like he did when he was being controlled, and he doesn't remember," he finished.

Deaton sounded faintly impressed when he finished speaking. Even Stiles felt it. Jackson was suppressing these memories as well, trying to forget Lydia. He was trying to move on, just like everyone else was doing. And yet, the Nemeton and his lycanthropy were struggling against one another to force him back to Beacon Hills.

"So, you're saying that this signal could be screwing with our heads?" Lydia asked, a tinge of hope in her voice that sent a sharp twinge of worry through Stiles. What was she so worried about?

Deaton seemed to be thinking the same, his eyebrows rising slightly.

"Perhaps, and yes it's probably affecting you as well and, in turn, you." He pointed to Stiles, "I know I stressed this before, but you have to be _careful _Stiles. Don't let anything seep in between those cracks, however small. Don't let anything get in your head, Lydia."

He seemed to be done addressing the both of them and Scott looked as if he were trying his hardest to recall something. Deaton's features were hard set and Stiles looked over to Lydia who was frowning at the words, her hands fidgeting with the bottom of her blouse. Stiles took her hand, gave it a gentle grasp, and nodded to her in silent request.

"I, I mean I haven't…" she stuttered before catching her voice again and continuing, "I didn't know what to think of this-"

She motioned towards Stiles and back to her.

"It was… well, it was great. It was too great, so I started to ask myself if I'd just wake and it'd all be a dream. Some things just don't make _any _sense, but I keep waking up and it keeps going on," she was rambling, her speech confused.

Before long she trailed off, muttering gibberish and leaving whatever broken,semi-understandable language as a fragment. Stiles felt a horrible hand snatch at his throat, forcing air out and expanding the weight pushing up from his spine even as he made to steady her wavering form. Lydia started to regain her composure and speech for a moment before blood started to fall from her nose.

_Drip_.

A singular drop fell to the floor from her lips followed by the crumple of her body onto the hard tiling.

* * *

**A/N: **As always, review – it's unbelievably motivational – and I definitely don't own any of the source material. I just jot down scribbles and pretend that it's writing.


	10. Denial is a Bitch

When she awoke there was no blood on her face. There wasn't much to see in fact, as her surroundings were blurred by a strange darkness that the shallow illumination of a single light did nothing to quell. Lydia was sitting on the floor of this space, curled into a ball until she gathered herself to stand and let her eyes adjust to the lack of natural light. Even so, the dull bulb above her only seemed to stretch its glow in a brief spiral before the disturbing black jutted out and filled the room.

What alarmed her more was the fact that no one else was there. Deaton, Scott, Stiles – no trace of any of them. As her thoughts started to run in circles a small voice crept up inside of her, increasing in volume exponentially before exploding in her head.

_"Do you think there's a normal for us?"_

Lydia's words rang out echoing around her, seeming to emanate outward from her and reverberate along walls. The sentence rang in her head, repeating and repeating until they blurred together into a stream of noise. There was little light and only the sound of her own voice repeating the words as if from an intercom. She wasn't at the clinic anymore that much she could tell. The small box was black from first glance and the only objects she could make out were a bed and walls, padded with a soft material that gave resistance when she gave it a stronger push. The absence of a door, or a doorknob, made her do several laps around the room searching.

The jumbled white noise in her head continued as she searched, hands hoping to grasp anything that she could push, move, or get through. Out, that's all she knew or wanted. Lydia wanted to be out of this room; wanted to go back to the clinic where, even with the threats of narcoleptic werewolves, she'd rather be. Jackson she could handle. A windowless, strangely dark room with no apparent exit was much more difficult, especially with the voice in her head – her own voice – repeating mixed, confused sentences over and over again.

_"It was too great, so I started to ask myself if I'd just wake and it'd all be a dream."_

This time the voice was louder. So loud that Lydia took to the bed and covered her ears with the rough-spun fabrics covering it, trying to drown the words out. This was the dream. There was no other explanation for the overlapping waves of sound in her head that occasionally broke through and appeared as words. They all happened to be things she had said, but it still didn't make sense any other way. It was a horrible nightmare, one even worse than those featuring Peter.

A sudden urge to fall asleep came over her. A debilitating fatigue spread until the bed was a welcome feeling underneath her and the rough covers and pillow felt like a piece of heaven. Try as she might, sleep never came. Seconds began and hours ended, time spinning out of control with the washing, all-consuming breadth of noise in her head. The fuzz would clear from time to time and events from the previous days would play out. Remembering when Stiles told her he was there; remembering hiding in her dreams; remembering the kiss; being stalked by Jackson; remembering the awkward first time after watching a horror movie; remembering Stiles.

Stiles.

_"Stiles."_

The hiss had disappeared completely upon thinking about Stiles. The voice in her head was calm when it spoke the syllable and didn't resume its awful white noise afterwards. This, Stiles, was real. The emotional tie was keeping the voices out, leaving Lydia free of the overwhelming voice – her own voice. With that she could close her eyes, rest against the hard surface of the pillow, and get some sleep. Run, run, running far away from questioning the reality around her Lydia's eyelids fell slowly as she drifted to sleep with the comforting silence around her.

* * *

Lydia dreamt of the clinic. There wasn't a scene playing out in front of her, there wasn't even a physical embodiment of anything that told her it was where she fell. There was just a feeling; feeling Stiles shake her – she didn't need to see him, she remembered this anxious grasp – and Deaton speaking in a low voice. What he said she couldn't distinguish, but the silence from the two boys was enough of an indicator that whatever he had said wasn't particularly great news. The next thing she knew was Stiles and Scott bringing her to a standing position and, trying her damndest, she couldn't get a word out. Then again it was a dream – it didn't matter what she 'said.'

There wasn't much to it afterwards. They seemed to be taking this dream incarnation of her somewhere, to a hospital hopefully. Something clicked in her consciousness inside of the dream that confirmed it – it was unusual, like she had been answered. It wasn't that she _knew _the information prior. It didn't feel like a tucked away fact at all. At first she was unsure and then, then a bright light flickered in front of her that erased the question.

Then she heard something else – no, hearing wasn't how Lydia would describe it. It was a sound most definitely but it wasn't that harsh static of her own voice previously tormenting her from sleep. It was a beat, a repetitious pattern that had a definable periodicity that came out towards her and was asking something of her – it was pleading. Without thinking Lydia slowed her breath to an exaggerated inhale and exhale until the beat slowed down and joined hers.

Now her breathing and this continuous pitter-patter were in sync, and with that Lydia was jerked from the dream back into her strange, compact, ill-lit reality.

* * *

Stiles was panicking. His heart was racing, beating about a million times too fast for him to contain it. The jolts in his chest reminded him of the discomfort in his back each time his heart beat, sending twin signals to his brain. His foot was jammed straight into the accelerator and the Jeep was giving everything it could as the two boys raced to the hospital, Stiles desperate over the slumped figure in the backseat. The blood had stopped coming after only a slight stream from her nose, leaving a few drops still on the floor of the operating room in the clinic. When she collapsed, losing consciousness almost immediately after her garbled speech, the threat of a panic attack would have been close if he and Scott hadn't reacted immediately. The confusion had overridden whatever anxiety at the sudden collapse, but the fact that she was still breathing – if erratically and with a shifting rate – had helped Stiles keep himself composed.

Or as composed as he was going to get. There was a strained silence in the car as Stiles considered what Lydia had been talking about before she conked out. The only part that seemed important was what she said about dreaming the whole thing – something he too wondered. Sure there had been plenty of time between them as friends but the rapidity by which they stumbled into their relationship wasn't anything he could grasp. Stiles always told himself that she was his crush, that one unreachable person he just didn't have any chance with, so when they seemed to come together so easily it was almost too much for him to comprehend.

_"It was too great, so I started to ask myself if I'd just wake and it'd all be a dream."_

That was what she said. She thought what they had was so great that it was dreamlike. If his heart hadn't been pounding into his chest then he was sure a giant grin would have broken out at the thought of it.

Instead it kept pounding. Stomping. Blood was rushing in and out, making the muscles flex and relax then cycle over and over again. Pounding; slamming. His breath was becoming shorter and shorter now, the force of his own breathing become too difficult to manage. Jerking and rocking. Scott took notice and managed to wrestle the steering wheel out of his hands and swerve them to the shoulder.

"Woah, panic attack?" Scott asked.

Stiles did nothing other than nod and try to regulate his breath. He tried everything, thinking about his dad being alive; the facehugger scare; sex, porn, fucking jerking off even. He tried to visualize the kiss in the locker room, Lydia, anything that would stop this. None of it helped but Stiles kept thinking of her, kept repeating scenarios that had played out before in the hopes that something would stick and calm him down. Even recalling the feeling of just lying in his bed, legs intertwined did nothing to regulate his hearbeat.

But then he felt some pressure being relieved. At first he figured it was Scott attempting his strange ability to take some of the pain but when he looked up his friend was on his phone, face contorted and saying something to the person on the other end. The stinging pain in his back first, then the struggle to get air in no longer felt like such a monumental task. He let out an exasperated gurgle before inhaling deeply, the cold air refreshing and bitter on his tongue.

"N-no, I'm good." Stiles motioned to Scott whose face was still plastered with fear at two of his best friends' sudden breakdowns.

"I'm fine," Stiles repeated.

Even if he wanted to explain why the panic attack, and the pain in his back that had been bothering him the whole night, there wasn't anything to say. First there was the beating pains and inability to breathe, and then it slowly evaporated. His mind had been racing for Lydia and his heart followed suit. Then, in the tiniest speck of an instant, it was as if he heard something – a brief interlude where he heard her voice telling him to calm down.

So quiet, so gentle, it was all he needed to forcibly relax his muscles. Stiles looked up into the streetlight leaving an orange glow in a circle around him, the slight warmth coming off of it relaxing his bones and sending another relaxing wave over him. He stood up, dusting off his knees and stretching his back out without feeling any upward resistance. Whatever had just happened felt _damn _good and his body responded in turn. Turning to Scott, he gave him a pat on the shoulder and a short smile before turning around to get back on their way to the hospital.

"I'm just glad you didn't kiss me," he said when Scott stepped into the passenger seat and closed the door.

* * *

Lydia rose from the bed quickly, her eyes wide. The light had begun to fill the room, clearly defining the white, padded walls and the cot she was sleeping on. There was a faint outline of a door, but indeed there was no way for her to open it from the inside. She wanted to scream, to shout for Stiles, but when she tried to shout again there was a dull sensation that flittered over her senses before she fell back into the bed asleep.

* * *

"When do you think she'll wake up?" Stiles asked Scott's mother without taking his eyes off of the pale face, eyes closed on the cot.

"We don't know yet. There's no serious damage on the outside, but we won't know the full extent until we run a few tests. It'd be best if you just…"

Stiles wasn't putting up with someone telling him to leave.

"No, I'm staying. Sorry, I'm just not; I can't leave her if she wakes up tonight." Stiles knew it wasn't very likely to happen, but he would never forgive himself if the first thing Lydia woke up to was an empty, cold hospital room.

* * *

She wanted to scream, to yell, to shout. Everything Lydia could do best, wail and cry for help. It's what her powers were, or whatever the hell she wanted to call being a banshee, and now she couldn't do anything about the silence. Voiceless she sat in the cot, feeling a black grip take hold in her chest. There was an immediate hopelessness to the words she wanted to yell, as if Stiles wouldn't listen even if he could hear her. It was that same darkness that covered her when her nightmares started up in earnest again.

"It's pointless," she said to the empty room, "I'll only hurt him again, hurt myself, then it'll all go to shit anyways. Best to just… stay inside here."

Lydia's eyes were watering now as that thought trickled between the cracks of the darkness, filling it up and leaving her all sealed up. All tied up, invulnerable to whatever he could say. It didn't matter now – there wasn't any reason to keep the charade going. If she kept it going then her outstanding capability at ruining incredible things would inevitably come into focus, sending both of them into this downward spiral.

"I'm not in love. I'm not in love. I'm not in love…" she whispered to herself.

She repeated the mantra in time with that faint beat in the back of her head, tears flowing freely onto the pillow in the quiet of the now bright room. The sting of the words on her tongue brought the harsh tears further into focus when another voice interrupted her, this time masculine and all too familiar.

_"Lydia, I know you can hear me."_

Lydia's heart pounded faster and faster, this time outpacing the patient beat alongside it. Stiles was speaking to her over that same insane loudspeaker her own voice had used earlier. His voice was so fragile it made it nearly impossible to keep repeating those words.

"I'm not in love. I'm not in love. I'm not in love…"

Then he continued,

_"I'm right here. You know I'm always right here, so just… just wake up. I don't know what happened, but we can fix it. I can't-"_

His voice stopped, the pitter-patter increased tempo, and the shakiness that always preceded tears filtered into his speech.

_"We can't do this without you. What happens when more things start coming? We – I… I really fucking need you, Lydia."_

"I'm not in love…" she whispered, crying earnestly.

She had to keep telling herself that. There wasn't any way it was real. Here, this blackness slowly loosening its grip – that was real. Being in love with Stiles Stilinski, mutual affection and care, wasn't real. It just _couldn't _be. Nothing was ever perfect, not even the fucked up perfect they had together. It was perfect that he could be adorable, idiotic, intelligent, clumsy, and athletic all at once; amazing that he cared about her enough to ask if sex was 'all right' with her when she half didn't care if his dad was in the same room; incredible she felt the same way about him that he did for her.

There was mutual love there. Something way beyond what she ever felt with Jackson, even if she did define _that _as love.

"I'm…" she tried to start the repetition up again, but her voice failed her. She couldn't even say it anymore.

* * *

**A/N: **I had a little bit of a moment writing this. I originally wanted to go down a way, way darker path but I felt it was too black/white and this is a bit more nuanced. Either way, I hope you liked it! If you didn't that's totally okay too. No matter what you felt, leaving a review tells me so much and makes me want to continue writing this stuff.

It's, like, the best feeling getting reviews guys!

Oh and P.S. I don't own anything related to TW. I'm just being a dork and writing fanfiction.

P.P.S. This isn't nearly the final chapter!


	11. Two Boxes in the Ground

Something was telling him that she could hear what he was saying. It shouldn't have made any sense, but when he spoke to the unresponsive Lydia there was no lack of conviction in his voice – no fear that his words were in vain. Even so, the first thing to go through his mind in this situation was the sick familiarity of it all. He figured the cruelty of this reality was too great for this to count as a nightmare, either. Not even his own, oftentimes dark, consideration of life would dare touch this subject matter. Stiles had buried this feeling away years ago, but here it was again taunting him.

"Lydia, I know you can hear me," he said, hands trembling.

If it took every ounce of willpower he had Stiles was going to keep himself together. If he fell apart now he may as well have lost hope already, and that just wasn't going to happen anytime soon. He had itself in him, he thought. Stiles told himself that whatever was screwing with her head had unknowingly made a serious mistake in trying to tangle with Lydia.

"I'm right here. You know I'm always right here, so just… just wake up. I don't know what happened, but we can fix it. I can't-"

Stiles felt another lump in his throat and images of a small boy sitting in the same hospital enter his mind. The boy paid little attention to anyone else but the woman lying motionless in the cot. Food, sleep, the chill air – they all faded into the background.

Fighting past those memories, his voice finally cracked under some unusual pressure in his chest that slowly came from seemingly nowhere. The strain was similar to when Lydia had ignored him and pretended to not care, and it came back in full swing. Something made him shudder and tighten his grip on her hand, those potential tears coming to fruition before spilling over the bridge of his nose.

"We can't do this without you. What happens when more things start coming?" Stiles gestured, knowing that wasn't really it even if it were just as true as what he continued with, "We – I… I really fucking need you, Lydia."

There it was, open for anyone to hear. Stiles knew she heard it. He could _feel _her hear it as crazy as that thought was and with that the black weight on his heart began to fall apart. He wiped away the tears still left on his face and tried to sniff away the remaining buildup. He wished he could explain it. One moment that familiar darkness crushed down on him as hard as it ever had and then the next it was as if something – someone – had lifted it off of him. Right when he could feel the trickle of an epiphany on its way, there was a flutter of footsteps from behind him and he felt compelled to let go of the limp white hand.

Instead of the medical personnel he had been expecting, hoping for them to bring her back with nothing but good news, there was both his and Lydia's parents. The bedraggled woman was saying something to his dad, who were both arguing with the other man as he gave Stiles a fiery stare and pointed at him threateningly.

"This was your fault, wasn't it?" His voice was just as thick with contempt as his eyes, "She's been hanging around with this former _kidnapper _and look what happened!"

* * *

A white heat spilled over inside of Lydia that she didn't recognize or expect. This was very different, but the essence of it was the same as the frantic beat still residual in the ambiance. The source wasn't changing, but the output had that anger filling it and Lydia had a strange compulsion to hit something or someone.

Lydia knew how to handle this – she knew exactly what it was like when someone took an uninformed perspective about her.

_Where did that come from?_

That was the explanation of the feeling and its familiarity, beyond that intangible 'feeling.' It was the beginning of an argument forming on her lips, followed by incredulity and the sting of ignorance being directed at her. As before, she let her muscles relax with a deep breath and simply forget it, move on and focus on what was in front of her. Unfortunately there was only a wall in front of her.

When would someone tell her where she was? The lonely cell was starting to get tiresome and Lydia had some words for Stiles.

* * *

Though he might have felt like he was right before the last few years of his life, now the only thing he could sense was a sudden urge to throw a punch. Everything that had been put in front of him these past few months – nearly losing his dad, best friend, and now whatever was happening to Lydia – was culminating to a triple point where he couldn't believe what he was hearing. These people, or rather just Lydia's dad, had sat by the wayside when she needed someone most and now they had the fucking nerve to call _Stiles _out. It was enough to bring him to make a fist and seriously consider that punch.

Then, just like the panic attack and earlier when he was certain he was going bawl his eyes out, it faded. He had taken a deep breath and let his shoulders relax slightly. Stiles felt the weight shift from his shoulders and give him room to speak. Before he could even open his mouth, his father started first.

"Let's just calm down and talk about this," he said through grit teeth, obviously holding back what he really wanted to say, "Scott and Stiles said she just collapsed, and I believe them."

"Well obviously you do! One of them is _your _kid," Mr. Martin retorted with.

Lydia's mother, who had been quiet after entering the room and looking at Lydia with falling eyes, turned to speak to the group.

"I believe them," she murmured, "I believe him."

Stiles remembered when he went to Lydia's room after she had been distant and detached from all of them, specifically that her mom had seemed aware of the situation. It dawned on him that she _had _known what was going on with her daughter but she didn't know what to do or how to handle it. The nightmares, the screaming must have all been too much for them. Seeing her child so close to nothing had paralyzed her into inaction.

Stiles knew that's what happened to parents. He knew it's what happened to husbands, as well. It was the same apparent apathy in his dad that masked the crumbling psyche of someone who had lost a loved one – Lydia to her mother, and Stiles's mother to the sheriff. If that cool, collected voice that had been calming him this whole time wasn't there Stiles would have fallen into another rage over the fact that Lydia's dad was focusing his energy on being angry. Years of it had taught Stiles that it never lead to anything more than a breakdown.

"Look, I really don't care what you think," Stiles said evenly, "You can say it was my fault all you want. Go ahead, waste your time. I've got more important things to worry about."

He punctuated that final sentence by nodding to the three of them and sitting back down at his original post. There was only the sound of a flustered man walking off to alert Stiles to any change behind him. Then her mother joined him by sitting on the opposite side of the bed. She gave him a brief smile that he returned sadly.

* * *

Despite his willingness to stay up until Lydia stirred, Stiles found himself asleep before too long. His eyes were growing heavier and heavier with each second and his hand was becoming sweaty and clammy still holding onto Lydia's, gently rubbing circles into it just like he always did. The only thing that kept him semi-conscious was the ghost of her index finger flitting over his knuckles just like she always did.

And with that thought he blinked and the next thing he saw was an open white space, the hand in his responding with urgency to his pulling. The strawberry blonde hair in his peripherals was a godsend, and then there was the familiar hitching giggle trailing behind and the long finger running across his knuckles. Stiles swore he felt the pang of nerves when she did it in real life just as she was in the dream.

And just like in reality the first reaction he had was to rub his thumb in circles before turning to leave her with a short, inviting kiss. Stiles had that same warm explosion in his chest before turning around with a smile split clear across his face, ready to pull Lydia close to him. What he found however was the hospital room sans awake-Lydia. The dream fell to the wayside when he saw what had woken him – a nurse was shaking him, repeating something.

"Sir, sir? Are you…?" He trailed off and it took Stiles a couple seconds to figure out what was going on.

"Oh, yeah… uhh, no I'm not family," he stuttered out, awaiting the inevitable clear off speech.

Instead he only got a sigh and an exasperated look from the nurse, who was holding one of those clipboards he had always seen doctors and nurses carry around with them.

"I mean, I'm not family but I'm kind of a loved one… does that count?" He didn't even know what he might be getting into.

"All I really had to say was that – oh, Ms. Martin!"

The young-looking nurse spun around to speak with Lydia's mother, who had apparently stepped out and gotten two cups of coffee. There weren't too many times Stiles could say he had even talked to her, but he was starting to like this woman a whole lot. The nurse explained something that Stiles couldn't quite catch to the woman, whose brow knotted together and eyes took on the same watery filter Stiles had seen before. Whatever he had said, the news wasn't great.

The older women thanked him with a throaty response before sitting back down and offering Stiles a coffee. He took it and drank it under what he could only assume wasn't an auspice that Lydia would wake soon. A heavy silence damp with an unspoken conversation followed for a few minutes before Stiles lifted his head to speak with the woman across from him.

"Do they know how long?" He asked, desperate for an answer to this question he'd been asking for hours now.

The disquiet in the sigh that answered him was enough for that question. Of course it wasn't going to be that easy. Stiles didn't want to dwell on the possibilities without being told just how bad it was, so he kept questioning.

"Can they… help her?" He followed up with, still somehow hoping for the best.

Stiles didn't want to escalate this anymore than he felt it had. He had already jumped to the most terrifying conclusion just hours before and the only reason this wasn't on the forefront was the dream only moments prior to the nurse's interruption. It had felt so _real _and left him with a mild content incongruous to the horror of sitting bedside to a comatose Lydia, holding her limp hand waiting for a response.

"They say it's… that it was a blockage. It might be; might be…" she trailed off, eyes flitting to the girl in the bed, "It's probably a tumor. Surgery… or maybe, maybe something else if it comes to that."

The woman's eyes looked as terrified and lost as Stiles was feeling then.

"What do you mean, something else?" He put out, optimistic again.

Stiles hated feeling like he was interrogating a terrified mother, but again he jumped to conclusions and he wanted her to say something else. Her answer was exactly what he didn't want to hear, though. The answer was the monolithic C-word that seemed to overtake whatever conversation it had succeeded, regardless of anything said before and between and usually after.

With it came Stiles's memories of sitting next to a bed of a woman withering away, eyes calm but body weak. His mom had always told him it would be okay, that things would be fine. Then, one day, he wasn't allowed to visit her. Stiles didn't know how to handle that, since he had his schoolwork brought into him at the hospital and had stayed with his mother for so long he couldn't really remember the span of time. The next day he wasn't allowed either, and soon a week passed and his father told him what happened to his mother.

Then he was standing beside a wooden box, crying and clinging onto his dad.

Just as the coffin enclosed his mom, the wood began to take shape around Lydia and Stiles's back gave a jerk. His eyes welled up, the heat in his face removed and leaving a cold want in them. He could see the hole they would put her in, the machinery used to dig it up, and the forlorn man who asked curious questions and said nonsense meant to leave them with a lasting impression of her. Then they lowered her into the hole and covered the coffin with dirt, as if hiding her from the rest of the life ahead of her.

Stiles could feel his breaths quicken, the air in his lungs expand for a brief second and leave almost immediately, when these events splashed across in his head. They were Lydia's future, or lack thereof. If they botched a surgery, who knows what would happen. If it was cancerous then it was even more fucked and Stiles knew it. He'd seen his mother go through that hell and end up six feet under, and here was the girl he'd list right under his mom as the most important woman in his life.

Right when the difficulty of breathing struck him hardest, Stiles could feel a calm rush over him like it had before. This time he was confused, wondering how he could be settling like this under the current circumstances. He got out of the chair, walking away in the hope to get some fresh air.

When he let go of Lydia's hand, there was a strong change in that calming feeling. The fragile snap of a breath left his throat before it all clicked. Stiles sent a text to Scott, fingers flying in an insane hurry.

* * *

There was white. Blank white openness and the feeling of something pulling at her to which she responded by pulling back. Lydia started suddenly, wary of what this new environment was before she saw the figure that was pulling at her, at least from behind. She could pick Stiles out from any angle at this point, and this was one she appreciated frequently.

The thought made her laugh a little and, out of some instinct, she gave Stiles's hand the usual caress of finger over knuckles before it responded in kind. She saw him turn around, or she thought she did, and she prepared for the follow-up kiss – and preferably more – before she was set back to the half-lit cell.

"Fuck," she exclaimed to the nothingness.

There was a whole novella-length essay she could write about the pathetic state she was in, but it didn't matter anymore because that rigid pattern of _beat_, _beat_, _beat_ had taken to an irregular sequence again. As before she took a breath and tried to line hers up with that pattern and set it back in line with a normalized heartrate, but this time there was a struggle on the other end. Lydia had never felt resistance when this happened. No matter the state of the beat, it had always succumbed and fell under whatever she was doing. It was always comforting when it happened and she couldn't explain why, but now that it seemed like there was some inhibitor between the faint rattle and her attempts to equalize it with her own breathing she felt panicked and scared. The action still happened but the even steadying took longer than it ever had.

Lydia wished she could explain why it felt right to keep that pace in check, or why she felt compelled to do it in the first place, but at the moment all she wanted was to talk. To speak to someone who would listen to her and most importantly she just wanted to see Stiles's eyes respond to something she said again.

* * *

**A/N: **As usual: review it, friends! Cue the "it's radical" speech, and etc., but seriously it's great when you do it. Think of it as an investment in Stydia futures :)

And, of course, I don't own the TW anything. I'm just a goof who likes writing in the universe.


	12. Reality is So, So Much Better

Stiles paced around the floor that Lydia was on, waiting for Scott's return text and – hopefully – Deaton's number. Somehow he hadn't bothered to ever get it, which considering their situation he should have thought about earlier. He needed to talk about this new development, whatever it was. All he knew was that when he disconnected that 'strong connection' of holding Lydia's hand, he couldn't feel that presence inside of him anymore or, at least, he could feel less of it. It must have had something to do with Lydia's banshee-ness, he concluded.

It wasn't that he disliked the feeling, or that it was even unusual. Quite the opposite, really. Stiles found the sensation strangely comforting and the pitch black he stared into every so often was a little brighter when that warmth spread over him. This connection was intrusive, but Stiles liked it and he hoped that it wouldn't go away any time soon. Of course the only logical connection he could make was that it was Lydia, somehow, who was doing this.

By the time Scott returned with a number Stiles was practically frothing at the lips with anticipation. He didn't even know what this could mean, just that it did mean something and if he was willing to move out of that room for even a few minutes then it was damn important. Stiles needed to actually speak with Deaton, since he could barely understand him face to face he doubted a text would clarify things. It didn't help that the number he was given was a Beacon Hills area code. Deaton wasn't _that _old, was he?

Still trying to figure that one out, he heard the familiar voice answer him on the other end.

"Hello?" The tinny, hollow voice called out.

"Hey, Deaton it's Stiles. Stilinski," Stiles replied already feeling dumb about his choice of words, "Anyways, I need to ask you something."

"This better be important, Stiles… it's, what 2 in the morning? Do you ever sleep?" Stiles hadn't been keeping any reasonable track of time and now the tired yawn from the phone made a whole lot more sense.

"It's about Lydia," he answered flatly.

There was silence on the other end except for a rustle of what sounded like covers and a creaking mattress. Stiles smiled, glad that he had gotten his interest enough to get him out of bed. This really _was _important.

"All right, you got my attention. Did she wake up?" His previously hoarse voice had found itself and now only sounded tired but sincere as well.

"No," Stiles muttered, "But there's this… I think something's going on with this tether thing. It's nothing bad, it's just – well, there have been a couple times where I was close to a panic attack or something like that and I think; I felt like we were, y'know, kinda talking?"

It made no sense when he said it out loud. He was certain the vet was going to call him out on it and make him to be just an insanely hormonal teenager. What he was saying made no sense. He was pretty much talking about telepathy or something, and even with werewolves and druids and whatever else that existed this was a little too much to envision.

"Huh."

There was a prolonged, uncomfortable silence where Stiles gestured to no one, waiting for Deaton to elucidate his point. Instead there was a continued silence except for breathing and rustling of papers.

"Okay then, can we not do the whole cryptic Obi-Wan thing?" Stiles huffed, feeling like he was already wasting time. Time for what he didn't know. Going back to hallucinating Lydia's funeral wouldn't be the best time of his life, but it still felt strange being away from her.

"All right then. Well… I honestly have nothing, Stiles." Deaton's voice sounded frustrated at having to admit it, "I have no idea how a banshee reacts to these things. I know about them tangentially more than anything. Some factual information but nothing like this."

That wasn't exactly what he wanted to hear. The last thing, in fact, was that the only person who seemed to know just about everything they ever needed to know was in the dark on this one. Stiles took a deep breath to steady himself before he continued the questioning. He wanted to know as much as Deaton could tell him before he went back to Lydia.

"Do you think it's… bad?" He inquired.

"No, as a matter of fact I'd say the contrary," Deaton exclaimed, "This could be vital to strengthening your bond. I've never heard of this happening, this hyper-empathy, but that's only with wolves."

Stiles went to interject his opinion before he heard Deaton shush him, to which he just shook his head and kept listening until there was the sound of an epiphany from the other side.

"Wailing woman, what do you know about them Stiles?" He asked.

"Uhh, well I know they scream when they're near death…?" Stiles tried, not sure what Deaton was getting at.

"So, when the power of the Nemeton interferes with that – or tries to bring her closer to it – and it's in the way of the bond…" He left off, apparently hoping for Stiles to finish, "Then it _interferes _with the bond itself!"

And now he was back in Chemistry, and Stiles had half-slept through bonding. Or he'd been too busy worrying about getting his throat ripped out that year, he couldn't remember which. His life had become a blur in that regard and things like ionics and covalents just didn't matter anymore.

"Uhm," Stiles blurted.

"I mean that it's acting on what the two of you are already working on together. It's like a catalyst for your mental link," Deaton's voice now had the excitement Stiles was waiting for, "It's not a bad thing whatsoever. You're manipulating that energy whether you know it or not. It's bringing you two closer, I think."

That he could get, at least in his current mental state. It did make some sort of sense given that their bond was still sensitive and open to any attacks, especially given that whatever was happening around them was being manipulated by the little Darach fiasco so it seemed reasonable that it was workable from the other direction. Opposing interactions, right?

"Death is inherently connected to life. Your… relationship is just altering some of her capabilities and you happen to be sharing it, which is incredible," Deaton said.

Stiles went to say something else to Deaton when he felt an alarm ring inside of him. Except, instead of a harsh ringing there was a strange grip on his chest that felt strangely familiar in its urgency. He callously hung up the phone, looking around and trying to pinpoint the source of it when his eyes bulged and he ran for Lydia's room. Half-way there he heard a blistering scream echo through the halls, confirming his thoughts.

* * *

Just when Lydia was beginning to think she might go insane in the room, her cell of sorts, she heard something for the first time that wasn't her voice or Stiles's. There it was, the faint _tap _of shoes. _Tap, tap, tap_ it continued for an obscene amount of time before halting in her vicinity. Was this is? Was she free? It almost didn't matter – Lydia just wanted someone, anyone, to talk to.

She was starting to wonder about that sound, that feeling that kept coming through as well. Not knowing what it was had bothered her more than she would have liked to let on, especially that she seemed to instinctually want to calm it down. Whatever that meant, since she couldn't even place exactly what the hell _it _was. The interaction with it was familiar and she was sure that it had something to do with Stiles, but what exactly wasn't quite clear to her.

The walking had stopped, but the door had made no inclination that it was moving. Lydia could feel anger boiling over in her chest, wondering when the hell this was going to make sense. In response she started yelling and shouting at the walls, hoping that whoever was on the other end would hear her cries for help.

"Hello? Stiles!? Scott?" She yelled, desperate, "Allison?"

After her little outburst the door started to shift, opening slightly, to which Lydia bolted out of the bed she was in to investigate. She grabbed the edge of the door and heaved it all the way open, and the mysterious visitor was quite familiar after all. His chiseled jawbone and satisfied smirk were all she needed to see before she let out a vicious wail.

* * *

Stiles wasn't alone when he reached her room. The same nurse was skittering across the floor out of the room, shouting for a doctor when he had made it in. Lydia had stopped screaming, but she still looked bedraggled with her hair firing off in multiple directions from her head and her eyes gigantic. She was breathing heavily, but she was awake and if that didn't make Stiles want to tear her out of the bed and squeeze her tight until she was practically a part of him he didn't know what was happening. There was an incredible heft lifted off of him and despite the scream he could feel one side of his mouth lift up in a grin.

Even so, the first thing on his mind was what had made her scream. He asked her and after a second of what looked like relief passing over her, she answered.

"It's Jackson. He's here, I know it." Her voice was already hoarse and when she spoke it sounded like a concerted effort.

"What? How do you know?" He asked, confused.

"I just know Stiles, okay?" Lydia's voice was harsh but after a second she returned his grin weakly and Stiles walked over as calmly as he could attempt.

Stiles first tried sitting down on the chair next to the bed, but seeing her eyes open and spilling warmth all over him was too much to stay prone for. He stood up and pulled her into an awkward hug, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and burying his head in her hair. He felt her respond almost immediately, hands slowly snaking up into position on his lower back and giving as strong a grip he figured she could handle. He didn't realize how hard he had been holding her until she twisted a bit in his grip.

He let go slightly but his arms were still around her and he kept his face touching hers. The contact of skin against skin, and feeling the heat rise to both of their cheeks, confirmed that this was in fact real. Even if it had only been a couple of days, not feeling any response from her when he held her hand was one of the worst feelings in his life. The amazing sensation of feeling her hands claw at his back, his hands rolling in the strawberry blond folds, and her breath hot against his neck was enough to send shivers up and down his spine.

Instead of heeding her physical warning earlier he grabbed her tightly again, squeezing her body against his chest in much the same way as he imagined he was going to. Real, he kept repeating in his head. This is real, and she's awake. Before long she squirmed again and made a sharp hiss that made him retreat entirely, fear plastered on his face.

"Sorry," he whispered.

Lydia pulled her arms back from him and fully turned herself to face him. She pulled him down and brought her hands to gently touch his face, thumbs sliding across his cheeks and her eyes searching every bit of his face. Stiles had only gotten this treatment twice before – once during a panic attack and another during sex. It was strange but it felt intimate at the same time. It felt like the two of them were isolated from the rest of the world if only for a brief time.

They sat like this for a few more moments, both of them considering the other – Stiles wondering if he was sleeping and guessing that she was thinking the same thing – before he leaned in to leave her with a soft impression of a kiss on her lips. As much as he would have liked to continue, this was different. What had happened was more like seeing a loved one for the first time in years and being awestruck at just how much you _really _cared in that moment.

"I love you," Stiles said to her, not taking his eyes off hers after they broke apart.

"I know," She answered, the smile still spread all over her face, "I love you too."

How strange – those words had terrified him just days before and now he never wanted to stop saying them. They felt right, leaving a similar twinge in his gut when he said it to his dad or to his mother's gravestone, and he loved it. He especially loved that she returned the words gladly, just like now. Like now where the two of them sat across from each other, hands intertwined and returning to their usual patterns.

"I should probably warn Scott about Jackson," he said nonchalantly like it didn't even really matter what happened after this moment.

"Yeah," she answered, biting her bottom lip and watching his right hand work the phone dexterously.

They sat like that after he finished texting his friend an absurd, overexcited caps-filled message that she was awake. A few words were spoken but, for the most part, Stiles didn't feel the need to inject anything unnecessary into the silence. Before long Lydia's mother had returned and he let go gladly, feeling a pleasantness watching the beleaguered woman break down at the sight of her daughter awake again after the potential horrors she was almost faced with.

After their tearful reunion, Stiles resumed his place from before and could see the smile break through on the older woman's face, and took that as a good sign from at least one half of the parentage. That was good – a .500 was nothing to scoff at was it?

"So, how long was I out?" Lydia asked suddenly, her eyebrows bunching up in confusion.

"Oh, yeah… it was, what, two days?" Stiles gestured to her mother, who nodded vigorously.

"Two days?" She blinked at him, before turning to her mom and back to him, "The way you just acted you'd think it was a year!"

Stiles was taken aback at the comment. There was no way she was serious, right? Wasn't he allowed to care about her?

"Yeah, well, it felt like ten." His jaw was clenched, trying to avoid too much action or else he was sure he'd cry again.

Lydia softened immediately, her eyebrows turning up as she bit her lip in consternation. He didn't mean to make her feel bad about what she had said or the way she had said it, but she really needed to know how much he cared since she obviously didn't actually hear him when he was talking to her earlier. But that was okay, because he never thought that she could actually hear him. It was just a coping mechanism, he told himself.

After a while of this impasse, Lydia started giggling before she started laughing outright. Stiles grinned reflexively even if he didn't really understand what exactly was so funny to her. He voiced it, hoping no real mental damage had happened to her while she was under.

"It's just… I guess _this _is our normal," she amended her question, looking into his eyes for recognition.

Stiles recognized it and laughed in response, leaving Lydia's mom to quietly chuckle uncomfortably with them. The two of them were probably an interesting sight to begin with – Stiles looked like a wreck and he knew it, and Lydia had just woken up from a brief coma so no one was calling her out on appearances – so this sudden episode of hysterics probably only made them look stranger. They had their little giggle fit out after a little while, the two of them taking immense comfort in the sound of each others' laughter and voice.

"Okay then," Stiles offered, "Yeah, I think it is."

They smiled at one another again and this time Stiles left a brief kiss on her temple and stroked her hair while they talked, both completely oblivious to the third person in the room. It didn't matter who was there, this was _their _time.

"Oh, I wanted to talk… about, well," she glanced to her mother who made a noise of recognition and left after gathering her things and leaving the two of them with a hug, "About something that happened while I was out."

Stiles tilted his head while his hand still played with her hair, setting it off into disarray even more so than before. If Lydia cared she didn't show it, though.

"Yeah, it was this strange feeling. It was like; like there was something there with me and it…" she trailed off, laughing self-consciously, "It's gonna sound strange, but it was like I had some sort of control over it."

He stopped his actions much to Lydia's dismay, or at least visibly. She seemed to slide backwards without the support of his hand and gave him a worried look as he took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair.

"We need to talk about that, actually."

* * *

**A/N: **Okay, so this an early post because I won't be around over the weekend to write or post this chapter because I'm going to my grandparents' 50-year anniversary and there's no way in hell I'm missing that. There was always the chance that I'd be here to post on Sunday, but who knows I might actually just get around to Chapter 13 by then? If not, there probably won't be another chapter until the Friday after this weekend just because of scheduling.

Either way, thanks for the reads and of course the reviews. I love those things but by now you guys should know that! It's not like I say it at the end of every chapter or anything... oh.

Well then, I guess I'll leave you with the disclaimer that I don't own anything Teen Wolf. Obviously.


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